Review: I Didn't Think I'd Like It. I Loved It!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 4, 2014
I had real misgivings about this one. JF Smith is a wonderful writer. I've read all his other full-length books available in the Kindle Store. But I also like inventive and creative books and, well, one more story about the "butch-violent-military-guy who is gay and falls in love" has been done so many times that I thought I might skip this one.Not to mention that, at first, I really hated the main character, Matt. Matt is a twenty-something gay man living in Richmond, Virginia workingin public health who's been in a year-long relationship with Brian, his beautiful, but vacuous and manipulative boyfriend. Whenever they are together, Brian insults Matt, all the while reminding him how lucky he is to have him as his lover. When they go out, they go out wherever Brian wants to or watch whatever movie Brian wants to watch, which almost always ends in a trumped-up argument that gives Brian a lame excuse to walk out on Matt and stick him with the check. Every single time.What bothered me is that Matt came off as both a doormat and an imbecile, to be quite honest. Instead of calling Brian on his manipulative behavior, he keeps telling himself that he has to work harder to become a better boyfriend. That struck me more like masochism than love.Later on, when Matt travels to Syria to work with Doctors Without Borders and is kidnapped by terrorists, we discover that he is neither a masochist nor a fool, but a brave and resourceful guy who just has a problem giving the "benefit of the doubt" to others, way too often. It's his charitable nature, not cluelessness. It's also his worst problem - and his greatest attribute.After putting himself on the line and being instrumental in a major national security coup, he is "adopted" by Seal Team 8, the guys who rescued him from captivity and certain death. The leader of the Seal Team is Travis (AKA "Mope") who, as it turns out, is also gay, but firmly in the closet because of Don't Ask Don't Tell.The rest of the book is about how Travis and Matt get together, and, in finding each other, find themselves.It's a lovely book, once you get past the co-dependent part. Seeing them stand for each other, fall more deeply in love every day, and work around the terrible restrictions caused by DADT is charming and, often, quite moving.I have just one minor complaint. The editing on this book was not quite as good as his others. There is one grammatical error that Mr. Smith manages to repeat over-and-over that annoyed me. And it only did so because this is the third book I've read in the last week with the same issue: people are not "which" or "that". People are "who" or "whom". Sentences like "It was a real person that had done that..." (should have been "who" had done that) and "The other men, none of which Matt recognized..." (should have been "none of whom Matt recognized") seem to objectify people, not to mention that it's simply referentially wrong, like mismatching "him" and "it" in the same sentence. But to give the author credit where credit is due, the editing of Latakia is generally infinitely better than so many gay novels I've read recently, that I didn't deduct any points from my rating - as I usually do. That, plus the book was just so damned good.Please read this book. It is, like all of this talented author's books, extremely well-written and often beautiful.