Review: Blah Yet Irritating
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 13, 2013
Guess I'm bucking the trend here given the prior reviews but I really didn't enjoy this book. Carter and Isaac were okay characters but the story was limp and not quite as billed. Veterinarian boy meets sorta crabby blind boy. There's the obligatory "let me touch your face to feel what you look like" scene. We're told blind boy has the most amazingly blue, not-blind-looking-at-all, eyes. There's a brief courtship. There's a bit of ansty misunderstanding. Most alive part of the book. And then they lived happily ever after.No wait! All that happens way before the end of the book. That's not the real story. What the author seems to care most about is that Isaac can't show affection to his current guide dog, Brady, because he loved his old one, Rosie, so much. Really that's the life blood of the story. I love big, happy, "smiling" Golden Retrievers as much as the next guy but when the reader comes away with a better picture of the dog, as opposed to the love interest, something's askew. The true climax moment comes when Isaac can finally hug Brady and murmur "Good dog!" Okaaay.And there were annoying little distractions that kept pulling me out of the story. There is no such place as Weymouth, South Boston, for one. Two different cities, ten miles apart. It's no biggie if you're unfamiliar with the locale but it speaks to an author who chose a setting she had to revert to an atlas to write about. And didn't make much effort for all of that. Place names are scattered throughout but there's no effort to convey a sense of place. The guys could be in Bangor or Boise for all the reader can tell. She uses "fortnight" and the British usage for the word "hospital" when these guys are supposed to be American. She's a native Australian. Why not write what she knows? But what I found really jarring is her casual misunderstanding and dismissive attitude toward bisexuals. Best friend, Mark's motto is he'll "f*** anything that moves." That's a quote and the character's point of pride. This tired cliche gets played repeatedly and for laughs. Served no plot purpose. Just felt uneducated. And particularly insensitive to a segment of the population you're writing about.I really wanted to like this book. I really wanted to segue immediately into the sequel. I could have overlooked the annoyances,and regularly do with m/m romances, but these guys did not move me. Their personalities were too bland. You get no clear sense of Carter even though he's the narrator. Lots of good, angsty stuff in a character like Isaac left unexplored. Even the doggies were way vanilla. Just blah.