Review: Enjoyable but frustrating too. Spoilers!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 7, 2012
Sooooo.....This was an interesting story! I admit, I really enjoyed it but holy smokes were there a lot of things I found wrong with it!Nigel is a real piece of work! He's a suicidal rock star pushing forty and looking to go out in a blaze of glory. Jeff, a third tour veteran of the Army, is made to babysit Nigel while Jeff's sister, who's also Nigel's manager, gives birth to his nephew. Nigel's more than Jeff can handle, though, and has to result to drastic measures to get through Nigel's stubborn, trouble making exterior.At first, I didn't like Nigel. He was too needy and melodramatic for me. Gradually over the course of the book, I fell in love with him. He's like an onion. He has so many layers to his personality that when you peel back one layer, you find another and another and another until you reach the core of him. Jeff is a pretty standard no-nonsense character. By the end of the story, however, he grew a little too desperate and pleasing to me. Still, I liked him a lot.The book started out just about perfect. It was extremely funny to the point I couldn't stop laughing for long periods of time. I loved the trouble Nigel put Jeff through. Nigel was so restless and when he got restless he'd want to go out. Those scenes were a treat because he'd go out dressed as a woman and I adored his multiple characters even Keiko the Kitten (who Jeff detested). The book is also extremely sweet. I melted at some of the parts when Nigel and Jeff were sharing their feelings. I also enjoyed their games of truth or dare. I found it funny that they couldn't lie during a game but yet they had no problems fibbing any other time.While the book started out great, it didn't take long for it to lose it's perfect appeal. As I progressed in the story, some things got on my nerves. For instance, I hated the sister, Diedre. She was condescending and disrespectful to Jeff, her brother. She was a total b****, very wishy washy because she'd talk all sweet and nice to Nigel then snap at Jeff and talk shit about Nigel behind his back. Honestly, if she was my sister I'd have either shot her or told her to shut the f*** up already. Talk about annoying. I didn't like how she treated Jeff in the beginning and I sure as hell didn't like how she treated Nigel in the end. Honestly, I could rant about her all day. She was a disgusting character. Classic example of why I don't like females in m/m books. They just cause unnecessary problems.Beyond that, after Nigel and Jeff got together there was a lot of sex clustered very close together. I ended up skipping a few pages because it was back to back sex and got a tad boring to me. There's also the fact that a few of the scenes that I was looking forward to reading about are skipped or glossed over so we get the 'highlight' of what happens but not the actually by-play. That saddened me because one scene I'd have really enjoyed reading about is Nigel and Jeff's reunion after months of being apart. Lastly, there are so many unanswered questions and loose ends. The most obvious is the fact that there's never a diagnosis given for why Baby Hazard ended up in the hospital; babies don't just stop breathing and have their lips turn blue for no reason! Something had to have caused Baby Hazard to stop breathing but there's never an explanation given! Oh! And I felt like the end was unresolved. We don't know what's going to happen next between Nigel and Jeff. Is Jeff going to give up his dreams and constantly be on the road with Nigel? What about school? So many unresolved threads. Nigel was also a bit inconsistent with being from Britain. He was speaking almost all American English in the beginning but by the end he was all of a sudden very British. Although he really only used 'knackered' and 'bloody'. Just overly so.Overall, even with the many faults of the story, I can't deny that I really enjoyed it. I laughed so hard in the beginning, I awwwed during the middle and I was engrossed in the end. It's not a perfect book but one I hope we get a continuation for someday to at least tie up all the loose ends.