In a word: cringey. Hollow romance, tryhard humor, nonsensical scenes. Writing is extremely mediocre. Lots of telling, not showing. Story structure is nowhere to be found. Even the wording of sentences grated on my nerves. Wouldn’t even read this quality of writing for free.
Let’s take a look at the first book. Others are right; it’s extremely obvious the writer didn’t even bother Googling the basics of World of Warcraft. If this is core to the story, maybe give it a LITTLE effort, geez. The leads would say things like, “I messaged you on the gamer chat app on my mobile phone,” which is such an unnatural way to talk I wanted to scream. The writer couldn’t even be bothered to think of a fake “gamer chat app” name for her story about two guys who play games together?!
The self-indulgent references to Chaz being a hotshot romance writer made me wanna barf. Nothing in the story works. I knew I was done when Chaz’s mom, grandma, and aunt barge into his home in the early chapters to encourage him to get with Kyle and then proceed to make multiple obscene sex jokes. They are excessive, tryhard, and not remotely believable. I’m so tired of this corny copy-and-pasted style of humor in romance books.
Despite all my misgivings, I continued on. I was a fool. It doesn’t get better.
Joel Leslie is ordinarily a favorite of mine, so I was surprised by how off his performance is. Awkward pauses, misplaced emphases, and occasionally offensive voices. (I swear one side character has a Mammy caricature voice, Christ.)