Review: Had Potential, but Fell Short
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 27, 2012
Mark is a painfully shy online math teacher who experiences panic attacks whenever he's around large groups of people and men he finds attractive. He was once engaged to his friend, Ruth, but that fell apart when he realized he preferred men over women. Now anonymous enounters outside of clubs and bars are his only forms of human contact, and they leave him feeling ashamed and dirty.He agrees to watch over his pregnant sister-in-law, Lisa, while his younger brother, Pete, is stationed overseas. While accompanying Lisa to a Zumba class, he notices the instructor, Seth. Although both men share a mutual attraction, Mark's anxiety threatens to ruin the potential relationship before it even starts.I really wanted to like this book because I thought the overall premise was interesting and cute: an anxiety-ridden man's life is changed for the better through the love of a kind and patient man. However, there seemed to be very little interaction between the main characters, maybe only amounting to 25% of the book. The other 75% was taken up with Mark's interactions with his sister-in-law, other female friends and occasionally his brother. There was no real build up to Mark and Seth's relationship in my eyes, so everything happened rather fast - one minute they're talking and getting to know each other on the phone and the next they're in bed together.Instead of filling the book with secondary characters' storylines, it would have been nice if the focus had shifted to the progression of the relationship and possibly Mark working through his neuroses. Throughout the book he kept stating how messed up he was and that he saw a therapist, but it never seemed like he made much progress.Unfortunately, this book fell a flat for me because the topics that should have been featured were glossed over and peripheral storylines received too much attention and time in the book