Review: So Conflicted
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 3, 2014
I really, really wanted to write a good review of this book. The author's heart is in the right place, I love that neither of his main characters is porn star material, and that it includes a young kid, thrust into their fledgling family, with no warning.In some ways this book was beautiful and moving.On the other hand, quite simply, it was not well-written. The relationship between the MCs starts through a prison pen pal program, and if you just read the letters between the two, you would be hard-pressed to decide whether they were written by junior high school kids or a pair of  intellectually disabled adults. The dialog is sometimes of the "see the dog run, run spot run" variety. There is simply no subtlety and not a single metaphor in the entire book. The sex scenes were only moderately hot and, sadly, repetitive. Like others here, I skipped them after the first few. Plus, it really felt like both men couldn't stop crying for the entire length of the book.A marriage happens in record time, with little preparation. That marriage is almost immediately interrupted by the sudden appearance of one of the MCs' heretofore unknown young son.It's as though the author picked through almost every Romance cliche, like selecting from a Chinese takeout menu, and then used as few words as possible to bring them to the page.Fortunately, the author's sincerity, if not any real facility with language, carries the book and, if what I've read in other reviews here is accurate, his subsequent works are much better-written. That's sort of what this feels like - a first effort that doesn't quite succeed. I just may check out his newer work to see if he fulfilled his promise.