dnf @ 9%.
sigh. i generally try not to rate books i don’t finish, but oh, man, this one pissed me off so it’s getting one star.
look, i know a majority of m/m romance is not written by or for gay men - that’s just a fact - and truthfully? that’s not usually an issue for me. i don’t believe you have to be queer to write queer stories; in fact, i’ve read a lot of wonderful m/m stories written by women and nonbinary authors. what i do think, however, is that when writing about marginalized groups of people when you don’t belong to said group (straight people writing queer stories, cis people writing trans stories, white people writing poc stories, etc, etc.) it is your DUTY to be respectful and knowledgeable about what you are writing about… and i feel this book failed in that respect.
i’ve read plenty of m/m stories where one or both MCs will pop wood at the drop of a hat for no discernible reason other than they happen to catch sight of an attractive man, fully dressed and minding his business. i can’t speak for all cis gay men, nor would i presume to, but that is just not a normal bodily reaction?? and i know a lot of these books are pretty much straight-up erotica, so i can roll my eyes and move on because i realize it’s fiction and is meant to be sexual and titillating or w/e. i can deal. there are a lot of m/m romance tropes i don’t particularly like, but even today, i feel like i’m so starved for queer media that i just take what i can get sometimes.
now, what really bothered me here in this book is the MC, West, getting aroused at his best friend’s funeral because he catches sight of her brother. i don’t know why, exactly, this bothers me so much, but it just does! like, it’s so beyond acceptable to me that Lucy Lennox wrote this scene and not a single person who edited or ARC’d the book thought, “hey, maybe that’s not a great way to represent a group of people who are already over-sexualized by society!” i just find it insulting and a little gross, frankly.
(please forgive any typos or errors. i’m on mobile but wanted to get this off my chest before i went to sleep.)