Joel Leslie does a delightful narration of this hot mess that may make you want to hate listen.
A frogurt review, aka The Good, The Bad
G: There are genuine LOL moments squeezed into ~whatever~ this is, which is the 2nd reason I finished it.
B: Every character is a stereotype
G: the author tries to reason past stereotyping and starts out ok (everyone’s fits some category until you know their details) but
B: It never get past a glib gloss on issues related to being a minority* and all the classic stereotypes are here
G: As are classic movie references
B: Classic movies are not a personality
G: But watching Lionel flit all over is pleasing
B: Pleasing to everyone except Dog who is embarrassed by both the flitting and that the flitting pleases him.
G: Dog gets over this hangup
B: But not before establishing that his go-to move in a crisis is to ditch Lionel, stranding him without a word
G: But at least he covered the tab
B: Lionel forgave him despite getting dumped on every date
G: Lionel has an alternate ride
B: The ride is unreliable
G: Dog’s family tries, at least some of them do
B: I was about to say his family is unreliable except I guess they aren’t. They’re stereotypes.
G: So much so that I thought his dad was kidding
B: Dad wasn’t kidding
G: Dad gets handled
B: Several characters do or attempt hurtful things and, in the moment, a lot of people who should know better give in to bullying of their friends.
G: Consent is handled well and everything kind of works out in the end
B: everyone in this book needed to be given a second chance more times than I would usually have patience for, to get there.
Steam: Low. Despite starting out as a drunken hookup, off page, there is surprisingly little steam in the romance. Which makes sense with how often Dog ditches Lionel, but doesn’t line up with Dog having above average skills. Which we mostly don’t see. It seemed like the sex scenes were written by a stereotypical frat boy.
That said, M/M shenanigans are, pleasingly, never presented negatively without immediate pushback. But public presentation as Femme is problematic throughout. (It gets a lot of focus, per the title.)
Narration: Truly fabulous. Without it I would have ditched the whole thing the first time Dog ditched Lionel. But Lionel the campy femme was a treat to listen to after finishing a more intense/fraught series.
(*Public perception is about how people treat you, not so much about who you are. You don’t owe people your whole authentic self, all day every day, particularly if those people are likely to hurt you for being your whole self, unless you want to put your whole self on display.)