Review: some content to like, but ...
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 18, 2012
I bought this book because I found another of the author's works, "St-st-stuffed" to be a somewhat entertaining read, and for 99 cents, what's the harm?Well, the quality of the writing, the melodrama and the Big Misunderstanding, and the sometimes over-the-top emo made for an unsatisfying read.  I almost stopped at 2/3 of the way through, but decided to give it a go and finish anyway.There were consistency errors and a distracting number of grammatical errors.  The writer used far too many asides, and broke the fourth wall repeatedly.  The author peppered the tale with "haha" and "hehehe" to signal to the reader that the narrator was amused, when this should always be obvious through the dialogue or prose.  And when the protag commented on the physicality and attractiveness of various male characters, the descriptions and the tone employed rang false and were too often just crude cliché.  ("What a package, eh!" ... and "He was some seriously hot piece of ass.  Yeah, I mean crack-an-egg-on-him-and-watch-it-fry hot.")  Of course I can't speak for all gay men, but never in my life have I had internal dialogue like that.  Likewise, our protag's physical responses to these men were described in hyperbolic terms that just didn't work.There were flaws in the plotting as well.  Some samples: the family dynamic of one of the protags did not match up well with his backstory.  There had to be more going on for that level of disinterest and detachment from the parents.  Also, the writer employed a tired and unlikely Big Misunderstanding that adults would have resolved in the moment by communicating.  But I guess it is more dramatic to have one party shut down and secretly flee in terrible pain to an almost-secret location, and not answer his cell.  Certain sleep-overs were never addressed by parents, which left me incredulous.  But maybe this was simply a Kiwi cultural difference.  Near the end of the tale, there was a dramatic scene with the father of one of our protags that begged for some kind of follow-up, if not resolution.  But instead, the subplot was dropped entirely.I will say that the few sex scenes worked pretty well.  Also, the uncertain but growing emotional tension between our protags mostly felt right.  But the emo did occasionally go too far.  And in the end, when the theme of a series is stated up-front, and the mini-description on Amazon makes events even more obvious, all we are left to look forward to is the execution of the tale.  And for me, this left a lot to be desired.After the main feature, there was a bonus short story that came-with when I downloaded.  Oddly, it had significant chunks of text missing, rendering the story unintelligible.