Well, not exactly a really tough read for this one. My friend Jeffrey gave me this book. Essentially I guess it's some sort of love story - but really it's a fluff novel. As I started the first chapter I could tell that I wasn't going to like it...It's set in LA, and the main character - Kevin - is a pretty boy, one of the most wanted and desired ones in LA. And it talks about how to be gay and be accepted, you need to look a certain way, dress a certain way, etc, and how if you don't do these things then you're essentially a waste. Not exactly a character I can relate to!
But the story ended up being - well, maybe not great, and maybe not really good - but better than I thought it would. Kevin meets Brad, an amazingly wealthy and successful entertainment mogul, and they meet each other's needs and then - twist! - fall in love! How dare they. That's apparently against the LA rules. And there's an act of betrayal, of course, that drives them apart.
All of the characters in here are pretty one-dimensional. Even the back story of what brought Kevin from NYC to LA is somewhat interesting but kind of flat. I ended up enjoying the novel more than I thought I would, which was a nice surprise. But I just can't understand or relate to the amount of self-loathing that each of the characters feels. And maybe that's the way it really is in LA and West Hollywood, at least for some people. And if so, I can assure you that I don't really want to get to know them.
I don't know anything about the author, and it appears that this is his only novel. Has he lived in LA? Is this his own version of a cautionary tale? Was he rejected from LA, so he wrote this out of bitterness? Maybe he's never even been out there, and this is all imagined in his mind...I really don't know. There's signs of redemption for Kevin at the end of the novel, as he starts living a different life. Which I guess is some sort of a happy ending. I guess we'll never know - and I guess I'm okay with that.
Good that you kept withthe book. I love how you contemplate the author's motivation for writing the book...sounds like you may be thinking more about why the book was written than the author took to write it, you over-achiever, you.
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