In sixteen-year-old Mike Hernandez's life, only one thing is clear: Gay is NOT okay.
His family's life revolves around the church, a church run by the vocally intolerant Pastor Myers, so Mike has resolved to spend his life in the closet. His only escape -- besides the occasional, anonymous gay make-out session -- is his art. He pours his complicated emotions into risqué drawings he keeps in a secret sketchbook. A sketchbook he carries everywhere.
When his sketchbook goes missing in the middle of Sunday school, Mike is sure his life is over. He's going to be outed, ostracized by their community, condemned by the pastor, maybe even homeless. What's worse, the pastor's son, Chris, suddenly seems hell-bent on adopting Mike and his friends and he has no idea why.
When an awkward confrontation with Chris leads to an unexpected kiss instead of a much-expected punch, Mike's world is turned upside down. As their friendship grows and faith is questioned, Mike may be forced to choose between the comfortable life he's always lived . . . and a chance at the love he never thought he deserved.
Quote: A REVIEW:
I've just finished struggling through this overly-long novel. I am reluctant to give up on a book, though I nearly did so several times with this one. The novel ends, then following are the acknowledgements, which includes a lengthy lists of names that one normally expects to have been included for their part in the editing, proof-reading publicity, writing suggestions, and other behind-the-scenes persons, who normally contribute to successfully bringing a novel to publication. The author glowingly thanks all of these people, but I would be embarrassed and unhappy to see my name in such a list, as there is little evidence of proper editing, proof-reading, editorial oversight, or even basic spelling and grammar checking in this ebook. The errors and deficiencies it contains are legion.
As for the writing style, there is no thought or trivial instance of life that goes unrecorded. It is replete with what my high school English teacher called "padding". The plot moves at glacial speed, yet there is never a moment when you don't know what is coming next. There is no tension. The plot relies totally on the convenience of coincidence. The 223 page length seemed more like 500 as I plowed ever closer to the underwhelming and unsatisfactory ending.
Browsing through Goodreads reviews, almost without exception, reviewers said they were unhappy with the ending. Apparently the author, Alexander Eberhart, took note of reader feedback on the ending, and wrote a follow-up novel ("Here Goes Nothing" - 2021) to provide a more satisfying and logical ending. I can't imagine I will bother to read it.
As you might surmise, I do not recommend this cliched gay boy-meets-gay boy-falls-in-love-with-gay-boy painting-by-numbers novel. It has taken too many hours of my life, which I will never get back, but worse than that, it has delayed by the same too many hours my getting to read a vastly superior novel about 2 gay boys; namely "THE SOUTH" by Tash Aw.
