Review: Amusing....
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 26, 2013
Here we have a book written in the same style asShy, another novel by the author.  That is to say, a lightly comic, humorous story that perhaps doesn't reflect reality in any way, but one that is a lot of fun to read and which features some very likable (and occasionally very eccentric) characters.Unfortunately, this book also contains the one thing that I didn't care for in "Shy" either---a ridiculously over-the-top case of insta-love.  And I've previously noted that I usually find this trope very annoying in the extreme, and in nearly every case completely unnecessary to the advancement of the plot.  Here we have Dill and Hector "meet cute" due to Chester (actually, I did enjoy that part of the story)---but after one date or so, they've declared their undying devotion to another and are moving in together.Ordinarily I'd be rolling my eyes at this in exasperation (well, okay, I DID do that a bit), but in this book the insta-love didn't bother me too much.  I'm getting used to the author's style---it's in the classic romantic comedy vein---and since this isn't a true-to-life, realistic sort of story, I was happy to go along for the ride.As a bonus, the love scenes in this story actually held my attention.  I've said before that after a while most of the more explicit content in romance books tends to all run together in my mind; I get kind of bored with it and just wish that the author would get on with the story.  But I found the couple's romantic interludes rather appealing in this story.  Perhaps it's because both Hector and Dill, while quite different in appearance from one another, are both physical types that I find attractive in real life?  Whatever the reason,  I enjoyed the love scenes a lot more than I have in many of the books I've recently read.It's too bad that I didn't find Dill's eccentric family nearly as appealing as Paul's similarly eccentric parents/grandparent in T.J. Klune'sTell Me It's Real.  Paul's family was fantastic; Dill's, not so much.  I wasn't happy with the rather mean-spirited  physical description of the grandfather, who is a sympathetic character and a positive influence in Dill's life, but who was described in incredibly unflattering terms.  Why write him in such an unappealing fashion?  From these descriptive passages, I would have guessed that the author was a very young man, but I checked him out on his Goodreads author page and see that he is likely a fair number of years older than I am, so I don't see why he's giving older people a bad rap, as it were...But---a few quibbles aside---I did get a kick out of this and am not adverse to reading more of the author's work.  However, after checking out his bibliography, it would appear that this book and "Shy" are in fact the only two novels he's written in this vein.  Recommended for those looking for a comic, light-hearted read.