Category: Reviews

I wanted a quick, painless, and easy read, one that would give me a couple hours of light-hearted and romantic enjoyment before bed, one that wouldn’t keep me up with thoughts and feelings, one that wouldn’t penetrate me. I picked this one; I was wrong in every way.

Sure, it was romantic, the story of that First True Love, and yes, it was an easy read, but it sucked me into its story and its characters and kept me there til I was done. There wasn’t sleep, there was simply page after page, my finger sliding over my Kindle faster and faster as I devoured the story of David and Ryan.

Set in the late 60s, the story isn’t confined to any period. Sure, having it there sets it against a backdrop of social change and Woodstock, but the problems David and Ryan face, in their families, their schools, their lives, with coming out, finding each other, finding themselves, they’re timeless plots. Skinner puts into those plots two characters you truly care about, characters that embody all the hope and innocence and dreams of our own adolescences.

Though different from each other in so many ways, David and Ryan are each drawn to something in the other. They find friendship, a friendship which quickly becomes so much more. As they go to school, work, work out, socialize with friends, they taste a secret love, sweet like fresh berries. They have no doubts that what they are doing is forbidden and not the norm; the cries of FAGGOT and QUEER are familiar to both of them. And yet, even in that time, they find people not bound by convention, people who not only accept them but also celebrate them. They find love.

They grow together in every way people can, completing each other, melding with each other. They build memories together, happy memories, and sad and passionate, memories of challenging each other to be better men, memories of sustaining each other through hardship. Skinner invites us to share those memories, and as surely as those memories linger in David, they linger in us.

Memorizing You is a mesmerizing read.

This review was originally published on homorazzi

Jason Peele is your typical high school student, with one exception. He’s gay. Maybe. It’s something he’s just beginning to accept, and on this path to acceptance, he encounters both hurdles and helpers. Hurdles include jilted girlfriend Meg, a conservative and concerned uncle and homophobic bullies Jimmy and Dane. They’re balanced out by a supportive friendship with Robert and a tall, dark, handsome student named Raj.

As Raj teaches Jason about Gandhi, non-violence, and nirvana, he also teaches Jason about what it means to be gay. It isn’t easy; who is it easy for? Two things make it easier for Jason: running on the track, where all his troubles can be left behind, and the secret knife he carries to protect himself. As Jason runs the race to self-acceptance and coming out, both the track and that knife become the source of even greater problems. There are some things you just can’t run away from. The confusion and fear and uncertainty of high school is captured perfectly. Equally confusing and also perfectly captured is that parade of “firsts: first sight, first touch, first kiss, first time: innocent, excited, frightened. It’s a story very different from my own, yet the similarities are there. The actions differ, life to life, but the emotions are what we all experienced. And the lessons are ones we all needed to learn: about honesty and bravery and respect

This review was originally published on homorazzi

It’s the story of a boy, growing up evangelically Christian, and fervently believing in his religion, and how he reconciles that religion to the growing realization he is gay. At the same time, he is dealing with being orphaned and left in the care of his older brother; being deserted by his childhood friend after learning that the feelings he had for him were reciprocated; becoming friends with a non-believer classmate Pearl; and finding dual father figures in Reverend Amos King, his godfather whose infectious religious rhetoric cloaks a secret of his own, and in Gregory Hart, a bachelor caring for his wheelchair-bound sister whose good heart cannot make up for the near-certain suspicion in this small Idaho town that Gregory is a homosexual.

As in his other books, Reardon perfectly captures the arrogant egocentrism of adolescence, that unassailable confidence, that smug and false superiority. In the case of Jude Connor, those already innate teenage tendencies are exacerbated by his belief that God has placed him in a position to judge and teach the non-believers around him.

One of the most beautiful and momentous scenes of the book occurs when Jude finally has That First Time. We all know how confusing and complicated that moment can be, even without a voice in our head spouting God’s condemnation. Reardon addresses the moment perfectly:

It was all wrong, and it was all perfect. It was dynamite and Hell opening up but also fireworks and shooting stars. It was Satan’s trap closing on me and the answer to all my prayers at once. It would kill my soul, and I couldn’t live without it

This book deals with the difference between the blind adherence to doctrine and the genuine expression of faith. It is a journey so many of us have taken. The Churches so many of us grew up in, supposed to be places of love, acceptance, and healing, take on a dark power to harm us as we begin to not only accept our sexuality but also just to think and question for ourselves. There are different roads we can take, and this book shows a few of the different results. We can repress and lie and deny, constantly fighting against such a vital part of our being. We can admit who we are and what we feel, but deny an act that is so natural and needed in an effort to balance orientation with doctrine. Or we can embrace our sexuality and ourselves, and find a way to have a faith that includes the message that at the end of it all, gay or straight, Christian or not, “our souls will be fine…as long as we bring love into the world whenever possible.”

This review was originally published on homorazzi

It’s a year in the life of an ad exec in mid-1980s New York. Twenty-nine is a tricky year – you’re too young to be old, but you’re too old to not have accomplished SOMETHING. You have your family, sure, and your relationships with them are good, mostly. You’ve had a boyfriend, but now you’re single. You have a job, but it’s not satisfying you (and you supervisor is certifiably insane). You’ve got friends, and thank God for that. They get you through the days, through the nights, through the ever-present awareness of the virus that has been sweeping through everywhere.

Michael Gregoretti (MG for short) can’t believe he is turning twenty-nine. His job as a secretary turned junior copywriter isn’t getting him anywhere. The play he is writing, about life in an ad agency, isn’t going anywhere. His love life since his ex Tim moved to California to pursue his acting career is definitely not going anywhere. His most immediate problem, though, as he starts his thirtieth year, is summed up in two words: Gwen Hammond, his supervisor at Malcolm & Partners Worldwide. Gwen’s controlling and creatively-dead work is suffocating MG.

While working under her (and buckling under what he sees as her complete incompetence), MG meets the handsome Craig Connolly. Craig and MG hit it off, and although the sex is great, and his intentions seem honorable, Craig’s availability soon has MG questioning if they’re after the same thing.

The author’s time as an advertising copywriter clearly comes through. He captures the frustratingly mindless tedium of a creative person being forced to give ground on every point of every campaign, to satisfy conservative clients who, in MG’s mind, wouldn’t recognize a genuinely creative concept if it bit them on the ass. While sometimes the minutia of the various campaigns MG is working on seem to bog down the plot (even as they are bogging down his life), days in the advertising world are broken up by nights with his friend Irene, his roommate Anthony, and the now-hot, now-cold Craig.

MG is an average gay man, with the campiness, cattiness, self-awareness, and self-doubt that characterizes the species. At times you want to smack him across the face and tell him flat out: if you’re not happy with your life, change it already! Somehow his friends stand by him through the whining and waffling as his job and relationship reach their inevitable conclusions. As he turns thirty, a bit of a deus ex machina ending gives MG the chance to make his life what he wants it to be.

This is John Terracusso’s first novel, and although not perfect, it has moments that stand out: humorous, painful, beautiful. Perhaps the lesson it leaves us with is to seize any birthday as a chance to allow ourselves to be reborn. We may not have control over many things in life, but our happiness is the one thing we can always choose for ourselves.

This review was originally published by homorazzi

Some of the most surprising and enjoyable reads I have had lately have been the result of simply walking into my local bookstore, heading over to the gay fiction, and seeing what cover strikes my fancy. The Trouble Boy, by Tom Dolby, was one of these.

It was a quick read, relatable, entertaining, and one that resonated with me on a lot of levels. It’s the story of Toby Griffin, 22-year-old boy-next-door, fresh-faced college graduate, who moves to New York City knowing he’s going to conquer the world with his charm. His dream of writing a screenplay that gains him recognition and fame are very familiar to anyone who, like me, enjoys writing. His dream of finding that perfect boyfriend is also very familiar to anyone who, like me, has never given up on that love-at-first-sight happy-ever-after ending Disney taught us all to expect.

Life doesn’t quite work out the way Toby hoped though. His quest for a boyfriend is interrupted by interludes with Real World Boy, Goth Boy, Loft Boy, nameless faces that could be anyone but end up being no one. His quest for that award-winning screenplay (and the front-page notoriety that would inevitable come from it) is cut short when he realizes that it isn’t just that easy, that dues must be paid, that it takes more than a good idea and a lot of wishes. Still, he doesn’t give up on either dream, even as he is distracted by booze and coke and the various troubles of his group of friends.

It was very real, the way Toby went from crisis to crisis, sometimes assisted by his friends, sometimes assisting them in their own crises. The book touches on a lot of more serious issues, without belabouring the point or becoming too preachy: safer sex, substance use, HIV, pregnancy. As Toby lives his life, his friends live theirs, and they intersect for moments of camaraderie and compassion, before diverging again. About halfway through the book, you find yourself slapped in the face by a surprising twist. There you are, enjoying a tale of a naive youth flirting with a glamourous celebrity-filled world, and then BAM, like a car into a crowd of pedestrians, everything changes. This forces Toby to look at his circumstances, to really evaluate some of his priorities, and he emerges stronger, maybe not making all his dreams come true, but at least getting closer to realizing some of them.

I also quite enjoyed the guy Toby ends up with. It’s weird how sometimes someone that has been on the periphery of your life, never involved but always there, on the sidelines, can suddenly get centre stage. It’s even weirder how sometimes, you do the same thing in their life. I guess that brings me back to that love-at-sixteenth-sight happy-ever-after ending.

This isn’t a coming out novel, and even though it does tackle some heavy subject matter, it stays quick-paced and clever. Its happy ending is realistic; not everything is resolved (nothing in life ever really is after all). It’s a good read though, so when you’re looking for a book to read by the pool this summer, filled with characters and situations you can probably relate to from Saturdays at the club, pick this up.

This review was originally published on homorazzi