Kevin F. reviewed on + 211 more book reviews
Excellent writing, you will get drawn into the story. The bad news is that the characters have sucky lives, and you will care
I have a complicated relationship with this book. Its about a kid that gets shipped off to a mental hospital to cure his gayness. At the hospital he is heavily medicated and abused, but eventually escapes and ends up at a safe house in San Francisco.
Complicated because the dialog is written in the style of a heavily medicated kid. Some things are real, and some things are not. Both the reader and the protagonist have a hard time sorting things out. Some of the things in the narrative are horrendous deaths, rapes, and other abuse. Some of it is engaging and witty. Some is romantic. Its a clever twist by the author. While I appreciate the cleverness of the author, it makes the story hard to read. I found that I could only read a small amount at a time.
I bought into the protagonist, hook line and sinker. I cared about many of the characters and their foibles. The ending was good our protagonist grew and we learned about love and loyalty from others.
Trigger warnings: Drug use, both the consensual recreational kind and the nonconsensual medical abuse kind. Depictions of violence, although one never knows if its real. Rape and other abuse. Adult situations, mostly M/M, including a very funny dialog about an on line strip show where the stripper is doing his thing and the protagonist is trying to have a serious discussion with the stripper while the show is live. Lots of plot driven sexual innuendo. Gender confusion. Abuse by parents of their children.
If you have read this far, I guess your question is Yeah, but is it any good? Why yes it is. Tough reading, but at the end of the day, Im glad I read the book. Im giving it a three I really liked the book and I recommend it to others. Why a three and not a four? The book is hard to read, mostly because the subject matter is awful. The characters are street wise, which makes them hard to deal with, and the adults (mostly off screen) are worthless individuals.
See what the author did? He engaged me fully in the life of these characters. That was good, but its also bad since their situation sucks.
I have a complicated relationship with this book. Its about a kid that gets shipped off to a mental hospital to cure his gayness. At the hospital he is heavily medicated and abused, but eventually escapes and ends up at a safe house in San Francisco.
Complicated because the dialog is written in the style of a heavily medicated kid. Some things are real, and some things are not. Both the reader and the protagonist have a hard time sorting things out. Some of the things in the narrative are horrendous deaths, rapes, and other abuse. Some of it is engaging and witty. Some is romantic. Its a clever twist by the author. While I appreciate the cleverness of the author, it makes the story hard to read. I found that I could only read a small amount at a time.
I bought into the protagonist, hook line and sinker. I cared about many of the characters and their foibles. The ending was good our protagonist grew and we learned about love and loyalty from others.
Trigger warnings: Drug use, both the consensual recreational kind and the nonconsensual medical abuse kind. Depictions of violence, although one never knows if its real. Rape and other abuse. Adult situations, mostly M/M, including a very funny dialog about an on line strip show where the stripper is doing his thing and the protagonist is trying to have a serious discussion with the stripper while the show is live. Lots of plot driven sexual innuendo. Gender confusion. Abuse by parents of their children.
If you have read this far, I guess your question is Yeah, but is it any good? Why yes it is. Tough reading, but at the end of the day, Im glad I read the book. Im giving it a three I really liked the book and I recommend it to others. Why a three and not a four? The book is hard to read, mostly because the subject matter is awful. The characters are street wise, which makes them hard to deal with, and the adults (mostly off screen) are worthless individuals.
See what the author did? He engaged me fully in the life of these characters. That was good, but its also bad since their situation sucks.
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