Monday 31 July 2017

Review - Unforgiven by Ruth Clampett

Dean and Jason are best friends and room-mates in their last year of college. They think they know each other inside out and have no secrets, but when Dean stumbles across Jason in an intimate situation with another man at a party, he realises he doesn’t know his best friend as well as he thought.

For Jason, the struggles are much harder. He’s gay, but very much in the closet. He’s in love with his best friend, and he has demons from his past in the form of a priest who molested him as a young boy. When Dean finds Jason with another man, the proverbial really hits the fan.

I found this book extremely frustrating. It’s a great premise, I loved the premise, but the characters … *sigh*.

Dean, especially was frustrating because he spends at least half the book being a complete asshole and saying/thinking terrible things like this:

“I find Jason in the living room, sitting slack on the couch with his legs stretched out wide and a beer in his hand. He’s watching wrestling. Of course he’s watching wrestling … the gayest sport there is.”

And this is how Dean’s thought processes continue for an awful lot of the book. I start to wonder, to be honest, what the hell Jason saw in him and there were several times I nearly just peaced out of the whole thing.

I persisted, however, and there was some payoff. When Dean and Jason do get together, Dean stops being so much of a dick, and goes into full-on protective mode. Where was this Dean earlier???? There was no transition from dick!Dean to lovely!Dean and it kind of gave me whiplash.

Great premise, okay execution that was nearly undermined by bad characterisation.

2 comments:

  1. Yummy cover but too bad on some of the issues :/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree, the cover is great. It was frustrating because I really liked the premise.

      Delete