Review: Wow!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 8, 2014
So many times I've been told that a story needs a hook, and an opening paragraph so profound that it grabs the reader and pulls them in. Two Thousand Pounds Per Square Inch has such an opening, and I'm actually going to recommend this story to new writers as an example. There's beauty in how the story is written, the little touches, applied with a deft hand, that kept me  turning the pages and wouldn't let me stop reading.Now for the story itself. I have great admiration for Brent. Hartinger and the project he's taken on here. More and more I hear that HIV and other threats aren't what they used to be and that no one cares anymore. As an writer of M/M romance, I'm also told that condom use in fiction is not the reality. But the risks of are reality, as Brent Hartinger reminds us. Boy does he! I gripped the chair arms and sweated bullets right there with protagonist Russel Middlebrook, waiting for his test results to come back.The author also included a small detail that I really love in stories of this intensity: humor. He doesn't dig the knife in and keep twisting and twisting. No, he balances a profound message, teenage angst, and an entertaining story with a seasoning of irony and humor, in the form of a counselor who's probably given the same speech a thousand times.Bravo for a well-written, informative story, and bravo again for dedication to a worthy cause--protecting our young people.