Tag: DNF

Review: Remember Him (Honey Bay #1) by Steve Milton

Wasn’t hooked, didn’t care. DNF 55%.

2 out of 5 stars

Kindle Unlimited. 153 pages. Published December 23rd 2019

Blurb:

Baxter Rawlins: a real heartbreaker.

He broke my heart ten years ago.

Back in high school, Baxter pretended he didn’t know me. I was a skinny, plaid-shirt-wearing nobody. I was openly gay, but nobody even cared — except Baxter, when he wanted a hookup. That was all a nerd like me could expect from the star quarterback and prom king. He treated me as his shameful secret.

I’ve stayed away from Baxter for a decade now, even when he came back to visit Honey Bay.

I’m older now. Wiser. I know I deserve better. But I can’t stop thinking about those fleeting moments in Baxter’s arms.

Andy Silver: my one weakness.

Every time Andy smiled at me from under his floppy hair, I couldn’t help myself. How could a nerd in wire-rimmed glasses be so hot?

It was a high school fling. I spent ten years running away from it. My parents never would have understood who I really was. Disappointing my father was out of the question. I couldn’t live the life I wanted, even if I loved Andy more than he ever knew.

Bumping into Andy ten years later was the shock of my life. That shy nerd is a celebrity now? And he works out? I shouldn’t dwell on how much I miss being with him, even if every sight of him sends me there.

My parents sent me to Honey Bay for business. I might just stick around for a second chance at love.

Remember Him is a 42,000-word small-town second-chances gay romance. On their way to a feel-good happy ever after, a jock and a nerd dodge windmill blades, fog up the windows, and discuss the fine points of timber, lumber, and plain old wood.

Likes:

  • Two classic tropes – second chance at love and jock/nerd.
  • Baxter realized how much he hurt Andy.
  • Baxter is no longer the big man in town.
  • Andy’s new lifestyle.

Dislikes:

  • Andy and Baxter acted like teenagers.
  • Neither man was particularly interesting.
  • Despite first person POV, the story lacked depth.
  • Lots of little inconsistencies.
  • No reason given for why Baxter was afraid of disappointing his dad.
  • Andy’s nerdy/geeky/dorky/quirky/cuteness got old fast.
  • Unexplained celibacy.

DNF 55%

I didn’t hate this book. Most books I DNF because I can’t stand them. This one I just didn’t want to keep reading. Put simply, I wasn’t hooked. Not by the characters, the plot, or a desire to see how it would all turn out.

To be fair, before I get into my many complaints, I will say that the plot itself isn’t bad. It’s got two classic tropes – second chance at love and jock/nerd pairings. Plus, Andy isn’t the skinny nerd he was back in high school. He’s got muscles now! And I do love when an ugly duckling grows up into a beefcake.

Even better is that Baxter is well aware of how much he hurt Andy, without needing to be told. He apologizes numerous times, and even came to town with a gift for Andy, even though he didn’t know if they would see each other. It really showed just how much Baxter never forgot Andy. The only forgetting was done by the townspeople, who no longer treat Baxter like he’s the prom king golden boy.

On the downside, this book suffers in the same areas as a lot of other self-published books. The line editing was good – no spelling errors or missing punctuation – but the story needs a good editor and some honest beta readers.

Despite being first person point of view, the story lacked depth. Andy and Baxter haven’t seen each other since high school. I was expecting lots of emotional turmoil. I was disappointed. The story didn’t delve into either man’s emotions. It made for flat, bland reading.

Andy and Baxter were twenty-eight and acted like teenagers. Dick jokes galore. I understand that they haven’t seen each other since high school and it’s easy to fall into old habits. The immature joking would have been fine in small doses, but it was constant. Neither man felt like an adult.

Andy was especially cringy. I felt like I was constantly being beaten over the head with how awkward yet adorkable he was. I didn’t find him adorkable. His ironic thumbs up and constant eye rolling got annoying fast. It also didn’t feel realistic. Yeah, he’s a nerd, but he’s not the socially awkward guy he was in high school. He’s a well-liked fixture in the community.

Baxter was fine without actually making it to ‘likeable’. He’s terrified at his dad finding out that he’s gay and lives in fear of being a disappointment. But it was never explained why. Baxter basically let his dad plan his life. He never tried to do anything other than follow orders to get a  business degree and join the family business. He even married a woman as camouflage (which I think is a really shitty thing to do and didn’t improve my opinion of him).

The sex scene needed work. It’s not always easy to get it right. For me, words like ‘dickhead’  are a weak insult, not an actual description to be used in smut. Don’t even get me started on ‘cockshaft’. Also, both men are gay but for whatever reason, neither of them was ever with another man in the 10 years they were apart. But don’t worry, despite never having sucked a dick in his life, Baxter is fully capable of deepthroating on his first try.

My final complaint is about all the little inconsistencies and things that don’t make sense. There’s a fair amount of things like rolling down the car windows although they were rolled down just a few pages prior. Baxter also drove his car from New York City to Florida just on the off chance he saw Andy. According to Google, that’s an 18 hour trip. That’s just plain stupid.

Overall, it was the little things that sunk this story. I stuck with it as long as I could, but there are so many better books out there, I couldn’t justify spending the time to finish it. Which is a shame because I think the author has talent. They just need better editing.

Review: All I Want by Stella Starling

DNF, which is sad because I was looking forward to this book.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Ebook. Kindle Unlimited. 356 pages. Published December 1st 2016

Blurb:

“All I want for Christmas is someone to love.”

Shy retail clerk Elliott Gaffney’s Christmas wish isn’t something Santa can grant him, but that doesn’t stop it from being his favorite time of year. Especially since he gets to work at Chicago’s prestigious Ashby’s department store in “the North Pole,” doing his part to make the magic of Christmas come alive for others.

All Bennett “Ash” Ashby wants for Christmas is to forget about it. Unfortunately, his father is forcing him to pay penance for the media frenzy caused by his latest public sex scandal. The Ashby heir, working as a lowly department store Santa? Only the fact that no one will know it’s really him can save Ash the embarrassment of being stuck in a fat suit instead of partying with his friends.

But when Elliott catches Ash’s eye, Christmas starts to look a whole lot brighter. And even though Elliott would never have the guts to say yes if he knew who Ash really was, falling for “Ben,” the new Santa, is another story all together…

Likes:

  • Elliot.
  • Christmas spirit.

Dislikes:

  • 356 pages.
  • Starting a romance with lies.
  • I was never given a reason to like Ash.
  • Elliot falls for the first guy who’s nice to him.

DNF 36%

I was looking forward to this book. Ash and Elliot show up a number of times in Be True and I was excited for their story. I knew ahead of time that Starling’s writing was longwinded. What I didn’t take into account was all the time I’d spend not liking Ash.

In a way, I have to give credit for Ash being true to his nature. He’s a spoiled rich boy who has never needed to think about anyone but himself. But spoiled rich boys like him always get redeemed. And I’m sure Ash does. Eventually. Sometime after the 36% mark where I stopped reading.

Ash isn’t a bag guy. But there’s nothing particularly likeable about him either. He thinks everyone around him is ridiculous for how worked up they get about Christmas, he only thinks about getting back to his money and rich friends, and he has no problem lying to everyone around him. Sure, he treats Elliot nicely, but it’s because he wants to get into Elliot’s pants.

I wanted to watch Ash change into a better person. By the time I gave up on the book, Ash was realizing that his old life wasn’t as great as he thought, but he hadn’t changed. No act of kindness or generosity. Nothing. And considering how long the book is – 356 pages! – the 36% mark felt like it had taken me ages to get to. I even took this book on summer vacation with me and couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm to finish it.

Elliot on the other hand was kindness personified. He really was a great character. Except for the fact that he fell for Ash, aka Ben, because Ash was the first guy he dated who was actually nice to him. Way to set the bar low. Romantically, Elliot reminded me of vintage heroines who feel the need to sooth the wildness in a man’s soul. “There was something in Ben’s soul, hidden away behind his cocky demeanor, that called out to Elliot.” Barf.

Add in the fact that Ash is lying to everyone around him about who he is. That’s not a great way to start off a romance. Neither is Elliot’s inability to keep his promise to himself and end their date at the door. That was a major dislike for me.

Overall, this book is so wordy that you could cut out a hundred pages and have a better story. I do have to say that the romance was progressing just fine. The men were getting closer, getting to know each other. I would have finished this book if I had liked Ash. But I wasn’t going to wait around for him to become likable. Not liking Ash meant that I wasn’t invested in the romance. I got to the first sex scene and didn’t care. And if I don’t care about the romance, then why read a romance book?

Review: Falling for His Best Friend by Casper Graham

Awkward writing and character motivations that don’t make sense made me DNF at 17%

1 out of 5 stars

E-book. 149 pages. Published June 8th 2019 by JMS Books LLC

Blurb:

Keenan Underwood finally reunites with Pablo Cotilla, his first ever best friend from his younger years. They begin hanging out again, spending plenty of time together. He enjoys every moment with Pablo, but doesn’t expect to fall in love with his best friend, who doesn’t reciprocate his feelings. 

Pablo has a hard time controlling himself around Keenan. Keenan is gorgeous, and the man has grown up into a hunk. Pablo doesn’t think he has a chance with Keenan because his best friend doesn’t have any romantic feelings toward him. It would be better for Pablo to conceal his real feelings rather than risk the possibility of being rejected by Keenan and also losing his best friend. But that’s easier said than done. 

Can they figure out their feelings? Or are they destined to only be best friends forever? 

Likes:

  • The plot and setup are classic.

Dislikes:

  • The writing was clunky. Awkward phrases, few contractions, too many exclamation points, and lots of people not laughing normally.
  • The characters weren’t engaging.
  • Their decisions not to try for a relationship don’t make sense.

DNF 17%

This book made me cringe. It reminded me of other books I’ve read on Kindle Unlimited where the author clearly never had someone edit the content. This book didn’t have spelling mistakes or incorrect words, but it is in dire need of someone to come along and iron out the plot and smooth out the clunky writing.

When I started reading, I assumed that this was the Graham’s first book. The writing has that ‘enthusiastic but unpolished’ feel to it. I pushed myself to continue reading, both because I assumed that Graham was a first time author and because the publisher, JMS, is a small queer press and it feels good to support them. When I eventually did look Graham up, I found that he has 30 unique works registered on Goodreads. And in that instant, all my acceptance of the book’s flaws disappeared.

If the clunky writing was only occasional, I could have kept reading. But there were so many awkward phrases that I couldn’t ignore them. Here are some of the ones I highlighted:

Keenan glared at the triumphant grin on David’s face before expelling his breath through his mouth.

“Judging by the tight clothing on the man’s body, his lean body is to die for.”

He also remembered how he almost drooled mouthfuls of spit at the sight of Pablo’s naked, muscled chest behind the counter.

Then there’s all the chuckling, chortling, and guffawing people do. Ugh.

The biggest issue, and the one that ultimately made me call it quits, was the reasoning behind both men independently deciding not to start a relationship. It doesn’t make sense. They both like guys, they both know about the sexuality and dating history of each other. They both think the other is hot and want to get together. And yet there is no flirting. No hinting. No testing the waters to see if the other would be interested in a relationship.

Because neither makes the first move, they both assume the other isn’t interested and so they pretend not to be interested. All because they “didn’t want to make things awkward between them and lose his best friend all over again.”

That in and of itself doesn’t make sense. These guys were best friends, but lost touch. Just because they suddenly meet up as adults doesn’t make them automatic best friends anymore. I honestly don’t get what’s going through their heads. The process of seeing them become friends – and more – should be the whole focus of the story. Instead, they both try to go straight to ‘we’re best friends again’ despite not knowing the other person as an adult. It just doesn’t work.

I’ve never read anything by Casper Graham before, and this book was not a good introduction. I’m tempted to read one of his short stories to see if I like it or not. I’ll also be interested to see what other people have to say about the book since there are no reviews for it on Amazon or Goodreads yet. I don’t keep track of how quickly people review things, but this book had been out for almost a month.

Review: Hold Tight (The DADcademy #2) by Alison Hendricks

DNF 28%

2 out of 5 stars

Ebook. Kindle Unlimited. 250 pages. Published March 21, 2019

Blurb:

“I won’t let you go without a fight.” 

After a painful divorce, Josh Ford is left fighting for his son in a high-stakes custody battle. When he contacts the DADcademy for help, he gets much more than he bargained for in the form of his college crush, a deliciously sexy pastry chef who’s always set his heart–and his body–aflame. 

Andy Perez is everyone’s knight in shining armor. He took care of his family when they needed him most, and he’s more than willing to do the same for his long-time crush, too. It’s not like anything could ever happen between them. The sweet, sensitive artist was off-limits back then and he’s off-limits now. 

After a major setback in the custody case, Andy is right there. Strong. Steady. And… kissing Josh. That one moment of vulnerability reveals a decade of suppressed longing. But when old fears threaten to tear them apart, they’ll have to cast aside their doubts and find strength in each other–and the family they could build together. 

The DADcademy is now in session! Follow a group of well-meaning, lovable, but ultimately clueless single dads as they band together to support one another in raising their kids and finding their Happily Ever After. Every book in The DADcademy series can be read as a standalone, but reading them in order is strongly recommended.

Likes:

  • Seeing more of the characters from the previous book.
  • The instant support Eric and Julian give to Josh.
  • Andy’s history living on the edge of poverty and how he doesn’t let it hold him back.
  • Josh’s insistence on pursuing his art as a career.

Dislikes:

  • The story didn’t hook me.
  • I didn’t particularly care for either Josh or Andy.
  • There weren’t a lot of scenes in the beginning with Josh and his son.
  • Most of Josh’s personality, especially his wishy-washy attitude and low self-esteem.
  • The issues between Andy and Eric about the business seemed tone-deaf.

DNF 28%

This book had none of the same magnetism of the first. Neither the characters or the storyline caught my interest. Even Josh’s interactions with his son only happened in chapter one (I gave up halfway through chapter eight) so there was very little parenting.

To give credit where credit is due, the one scene between father and son did make Josh seem like he genuinely loved Mason. But when Josh’s ex-wife showed up, I thought her concerns about Josh’s parenting style were reasonable. She complained about how Josh never disciplined Mason, and didn’t provide structure, like having a fixed bedtime. What made it worse was Josh’s attempt to defend his decision. To be fair, I think threatening to take away Josh’s parental rights was a little harsh, but I didn’t think she was some unreasonable bi*ch.

I did learn some things that made Josh a little more understandable, if not more likeable. Like how he suffers from anxiety and panic attacks. It at least helped make sense of his desire to run away, sometimes literally, from almost everything. Josh also doesn’t like confrontation, but decided to push past that if it meant keeping his son. That was great.

What wasn’t great was learning that Josh wasn’t happy with his ‘every other weekend and one week a month’ time with Mason, but he hadn’t done anything about it before. Why not fight for his son when the divorce happened? Why did Josh wait until his custody was threatened to do something? It made him feel like a character who just went along with things, only reacting when something massive went wrong. This point was only driven home by the two sentences that soured me to Josh completely. “School and doctors’ visits were something Kim had always handled. He’d never been asked to come along, so he just hadn’t.”

The only thing Josh seems really passionate about is his art. He refuses to take a “dead-end job, watching the clock all day” like his ex-wife and instead relentlessly pursues his art, bouncing from job to job as a freelance artist.

On the other hand, Andy was an interesting character, but he didn’t jump off the page. I liked his family backstory, as well as his desire to keep improving the bakery. But when Andy was trying to convince Eric to start a Facebook page and website for the bakery, and Eric resisted, I almost couldn’t believe what I was reading. In today’s world, social media for businesses is everything, especially with Instagramable things like baked goods. For a business owner not to want to take advantage of something as simple as a free Facebook page seemed very out of touch with the reality of 2019 marketing. It honestly made me lose a little faith that the author knew what she was writing about.

This book gets a 2 star rating because while there was nothing that made me want to keep reading, the plot seemed strong and the characters were consistent. I’m not sure if I’ll keep going with this series, but I’d be willing to try reading something else from this author in the future.

Review: Serve (Men of Hidden Creek Season 1 # 5) by Ian O. Lewis

Needs a good editor.

2 out of 5 stars

Ebook. Kindle Unlimited. 288 pages. Published April 1, 2018

Blurb:

“No More Secrets Everything Tennis champion Tyler Florman touches turns to gold. Winning is easy, but fame comes with a price. Living in the closet in exchange for riches and honors was second nature, until he met the younger man who conquered his heart. 

Chip Carter has turned a childhood trauma into a career saving lives. As an EMT, he’s never found time for love, but all of that could be about to change when he rescues the famous, older athlete who steals his heart for the very first time. 

Avoiding love is second nature for both men, until they meet that special someone worth fighting for. The odds against Chip and Tyler look insurmountable. But can Tyler leave the safety of the closet, and win Chip’s love at the same time? 

Welcome to Hidden Creek, Texas, where the heart know what it wants, and where true love lives happily ever after. Every Men of Hidden Creek novel can be read on its own, but keep an eye out for familiar faces around town! This book contains an eccentric blue-haired aunt, a spurned blackmailer, and a whole lot of balls. 

Likes:

  • The acknowledgement that it can be hard for sport figures to come out.

Dislikes:

  • No hook.
  • Needs a good line editor.
  • Neither Chip nor Tyler made he want to know more about them.
  • The prologue was actually a preview of what happens in chapter fourteen.

DNF 20%

This gets a 2 star rating because, while I didn’t get into it, it wasn’t terrible. It just didn’t make me want to read more. I got to chapter six, and the first kiss, and felt nothing. I didn’t care about either character, what they were going through, or where they were headed as a couple. And for me, there’s no point continuing if I don’t care about the characters.

Chip is a twenty year old who constantly has trouble getting to work on time but is an EMT responsible for saving people’s lives. Tyler is a tennis champ who only feels happy right after winning so he doesn’t want to retire despite being miserable. Both of these characters put me off and nothing they said or did made me warm up to them.

None of the side characters caught my attention either. It’s clear that Tyler has some toxic people in his life. As for Aunt Dixie, she’s not believable as a seventy-one year old. If she was in her forties or fifties, sure. It would also make more sense if she was younger, because Chip is only twenty and Dixie is his father’s younger sister.

The whole thing (or at least the part I read, so I’ll assume it applies to the whole book) needs a good line editor. There is massive pronoun confusion, changes in tense, awkward phrasing, and entire blocks of dialogue that you have no idea who is talking until the end. I’ll usually put up with some imperfection from a self-published author, but this was a bit much, and a marked drop in quality from the other books in the series.  Add in random POV shifts, including paragraphs from side characters, despite the chapters being marked as coming from either Tyler or Chip, and it was a choppy read.

My final big complaint was the prologue chapter. It shows a scene where Tyler and Chip are together. Since there’s no context, I assumed it was in the past, and Tyler and Chip had been a couple when they were teens. So I was really confused when they met as adults and thought the other looked familiar but couldn’t remember why. Turns out, the “prologue chapter” is actually a sneak peek of what the two will be getting up to in chapter fourteen. This would have lost the book an automatic star just for the confusion it caused me, even if I had liked the book.

Ian O. Lewis is an author I’ve never read before, and I can’t say this was a good first impression. He has not written any other books for the Hidden Creek series, so I won’t likely be reading his other works any time soon. I have to admit, I was incredibly disappointed with this book. Especially when it’s a series, I try to read everything, even if I end up skimming. I just wasn’t willing to spend my time on something I had to force myself to keep reading. I had enough of that in high school.

Review: Daddy Issues by Seth King

I wanted to like this book, but couldn’t.

1 out of 5 stars

Ebook. 222 pages. Published April 10th 2018

Blurb:

Their bond is forbidden. Their relationship could upend lives. But their love? It’s a force of nature… 

Ten years ago, a desperate and confused Robert Glazer briefly married a woman before confronting his sexuality and starting his life as an out gay man. They divorced and lost contact – until now. 

Today, a sudden family death throws Robert and his ex-wife back together for the first time. That’s where Robert meets her son Eliot, who was raised with his own father and is now a gorgeous – and openly gay – adult. And to Robert and Eliot’s surprise, sparks fly. 

Passion ignites, then threatens to explode. Soon Eliot knows three things. One: Robert is not his father figure, and never was – in fact, he barely remembers him. Two: news of their union would still rock his whole world. And three: he craves Robert more than anything he has ever wanted. And as suspicions arise, their attraction only grows…

Likes:

  • The blurb sucked me in.
  • The prologue made me interested.
  • The cover is hot.

Dislikes:

  • Everything else.

DNF 5%

I was excited when this book showed up in my BookBub email because I was looking for another book to read. What a disappointment.

Maybe I’m getting more picky the older I get (I’ll turn 30 next year) but I had a very strong negative reaction to this book. Which is a shame because the premise was promising. Even the prologue made me eager to read more despite being written in first person present tense, which I generally don’t like.

But when I got to Part 1 of the actual story, everything fell apart in a massive way.

The second sentence is “He’s in town for the funeral” which sets a tone in my mind that this is a somber situation. And that is not born out by what follows next, and I’m not just talking about the insta-lust between Eliot and Robert.

We’re immediately dropped into Eliot’s rambling internal monologue stream-of-consciousness info dump. No real setup of the scene or the location. Just brief mentions of a buffet line and a banquet room and now I have no idea where these characters are. All I know is they’re undressing each other with their eyes.

It’s Eliot’s inner rambling that killed it for me. All the rest of it I could have dealt with. It seriously felt like I was being beaten over the head by the info. I only needed to be told once that Robert was Eliot’s stepfather for a short time, they never lived together, and Eliot never saw Robert as a father figure. Instead, the info was repeated several times.

It got to the point where I just wanted Eliot to shut up. But when I went to skip ahead, I discovered there were no chapter marks in the book. That alone would have taken it down half a star for poor book design.

I skipped ahead to Robert’s point of view and find… more of the exactly the same kind of internal rambling without anything happening to move the plot along. Ugh. What was worse, there was this constant back and forth in the internal monologue. I’ll paraphrase.

This is wrong.

Or is it?

Yeah, definitely wrong.

But he’s so hot, and I want him. How wrong can it be?

Very wrong. Think pure thoughts.

What made me quit for good was Eliot bringing his cheating boyfriend, who has a temper and who Eliot knows he shouldn’t have taken back, with him to his grandmother’s weeklong celebration of life getaway. Eliot admits he’s spineless for tanking his ex back but it’s not his fault, see. He’s southern and has good manners and doesn’t want to rock the boat.

Nope.

On the one hand, I feel really bad because I only got 28 pages into this book. On the other hand, I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy any part of this if the beginning got on my nerves this much. Oh well.

Review: Bankers’ Hours by Wade Kelly

Grant ruined the book for me.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Ebook, 290 pages. Published March 25th 2016 by Dreamspinner Press LLC

Blurb:

Even though bankers’ hours leave long weekends for romance, cosmic intervention is Grant’s only option when money doesn’t buy happiness and he’s got virginity in spades.

Grant Adams is a twenty-six-year-old bank teller who’s unlucky at love, yet hopelessly hopeful. After years of horrific first dates, he’s convinced he’s saving himself for true love. Surely he has bad taste in men because it couldn’t possibly be his persnickety nature that’s sent them packing.

Tristan Carr has been in a holding pattern since his daughter was born fifteen years ago, which suits his workaholic lifestyle just fine. This ex-Navy turned auto mechanic never wanted anyone interfering with being a weekend dad. For Tristan to rearrange his perfectly orchestrated life, a guy will need to be special. Or in the case of the newest employee at his bank, the guy will need to be adorable, shy, and open to the prospect of forever when it shows up at his window. 

Likes:

  • Tristan seemed like a nice guy.
  • Mel seemed like an interesting guy.
  • The plot wasn’t bad.

Dislikes:

  • Grant.

DNF 23%

This book was so not for me. I couldn’t get into Grant’s character from the start. It wasn’t the OCD, or being a virgin, or being socially awkward. I’ve liked characters who had those traits before. Maybe not all of them at once, but none were enough to get me to stop reading. It took me to about 15% to realize why I didn’t like Grant. He has the emotional maturity of a teenager.

As soon as I realized that, it all made sense. And I thought I’d be okay with things now that I’d recognized it. I told myself I’d continue to 30% and then see how things were going. And I gave up at 23%. I just couldn’t. Grant is 26 years old and he obsesses about what to say/ how to act/ what people are thinking about him in the exact same way I was when I was sixteen.

I get that Grant has an (unrealistically) bad dating history and that he had zero self-confidence. He’s also a victim of the ‘I’m awkward and clumsy and those are character flaws’ type of thinking, which I personally hate. But beyond that, there are just some things about him that are meant to add to his awkward virgin personality that are simply not realistic at all.

I’m willing to believe that he’s a virgin who’s never been kissed, but I don’t believe that he has no t-shirts (just work clothes) and he’s never once had anything alcoholic to drink. He talks about going out with friends and travelling to Ireland and around Europe, and he went to college. These might seem like little nitpicky things, but there’s no explanation given for them, which makes them seem like things the author just threw in to make Grant seem even weirder.  

I gave up when Grant started thinking that Tristan might be ‘the one’ after they’d only had one kind-of date. It was just too teenager for me to believe. If Grant had been a seventeen year old with his first boyfriend, and he thought they’d be together forever, it would have been more believable. As it was, I knew I’d only get more annoyed if I continued reading, so I stopped.

It really was a shame too, because I liked the setup and all the characters besides Grant. I think that if Grant had been just a little more mature or even more confident, I would have been fine with the story. That’s why I didn’t give the book a one star like I usually do when I DNF. The book wasn’t bad, per se, it just wasn’t for me.