Review: Funniest Brit m/m writer EVER...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 5, 2013
J. L. Merrow surely wins the prize for funniest m/m romance writer. The fact that she delivers a good romance heavily loaded with contemporary Brit idiom and a nice dose of modern class consciousness just makes it all the more fun to read for an auslander like myself.So we have Jude, a half-Japanese hybrid with his best college chum Keisha, a dark-skinned fighter from the poor side of town;  then there's Jude's hairdresser mom, Marina, who was dumped by her Japanese boyfriend after she got pregnant, and David, the macho karate instructor who works in building inspection; and Kevin who works with David, but who is dating Jude's mom.  Got it?Jude is maddeningly fey and twinklike - in a totally adorable way.  The book is written from his POV, and while you want to slap him for silliness sometimes, you also are led to understand how simultaneously wise and naive twenty-two can be (and believe me, the age thing is very much a part of this complicated and yet somehow trifling plot). I couldn't help but sympathize with Jude's battered little heart. However annoying, he's a profoundly good guy, and that goodness saves him, at least for me.I have to say I loved the way Merrow draws the characters for us.  Jude's relationship with his mother is wonderful - and important. This is where you see Jude at his finest and least silly; and his mother's love for her very gay son is fierce and proud.  Even the very secondary figure of Kevin is subtly rendered in ever more telling detail, forcing you to continually change your sense of who he is as Jude himself does.David, the other main character, however, remains a bit of a cipher.  We get quite a few details about him, but never quite enough, I felt, to really latch onto him and care about him.  He's kind, and gentle and handsome - but somehow he's never quite complex enough to really involve me.  This is too bad, because Jude really is into him.The title derives from the poetry slams that Jude and Keisha take part in - a shared interest in poetry is a strong undercurrent.  I will say that the one real disappointment for me was the poem that David writes at the end.  I can't tell you more than that, or risk major spoilers - but I really had hoped for more.