There be spoilers. I'm pretty pissed off at the moment. What a waste of time this was.

CW: Homophobia, racism, cheating, and sexual assault.

I only liked Holden. And even he was an idiot. But I could empathize with this struggles - coming to terms with his feelings for another boy, figuring out that he's bi-sexual (though I'm not sure why he'd think that, since he hasn't even had a girlfriend), and dealing with being bullied at school, on top of living with an asshole father and a doormat mother, unable to live up to his Golden Boy older brother, who was much less an asshole than I expected based on how his character was initially set up. Holden's best friend of 14 years (Tiffany) is abandoning him for a boy, though I'm honestly not even sure why Holden thought of her as his friend in the first place - she was nothing but a bitch to him. 

All the characters in his book are one-dimensional card board cutouts. You have the rich boy jerkface who thinks he can throw his daddy's money in everyone's face, the bitchy-only female, the pedophile principal (ew, ew, ew, what the fuck was that shit, touching Holden inappropriately, talking about blow jobs to make a record go away, and then comparing his dick to Aaron's whose dick he presumably knows NOTHING about), and the cheating daddy fucking Holden's best friend, who's - you guessed it - suddenly pregnant.

None of the characters, including Aaron, the love interest, made any fucking sense with their actions. Not a single one. Not Holden thinking he can just go to the city and enroll in college, and find a job that will pay him enough to cover his cost of living, not Aaron, whose pillow talk was the most ridiculous thing I've ever read in a romance novel, not Jeff, the jerkface, not Tiffany, the bitch, not the principal (what the FUCK was that shit), and not Holden's parents. 

At one point Aaron's father leaves for a conference of some sort in Seattle - which, super convenient, amirite, so Aaron and Holden can have a sleepover and sex it up (virgin ass and all), and we're supposed to believe that a small town mechanic goes to a conference, leaving no one to work on the cars in the shop? 

This book was an utter mess, and I don't just mean the stilted, unrealistic dialogue and ridiculous plot. The editor was MIA, and the proof-reader took a vacation, I guess. Grammar seemed optional. 

Men don't have a g-spot. A virgin like Holden, never having even CONSIDERED gay sex, has likely not heard of the prostrate. And he sure as fuck wouldn't call it a g-spot. 

At one point, Aaron says "Open Says Me". I suppose the author meant OPEN SESAME. How was that not caught? Then a few pages later, Aaron opens the condom and puts it on, with HIS TEETH. On himself. Uhm, sure, whatever floats your boat. I guess you're super bendy. Never mind the holes you just made with your teeth, you moron, which sort of defeats the purpose of putting on a condom in the first place. 

And to top off the editorial proof-reading fuckery, in one instance HOLDEN is called AARON. 

And, and, and... there's no HEA, not even a HFN - the couple has broken up at book's end because Holden is leaving town and Aaron isn't. We get a "To Be Continued" as if that isn't something you should tell your readers up front.

Not recommended. Possibly the worst book I've read this year. JFC. Yeah, I know it's YA, but young adults would like to read good books. And this isn't a good book. 

I'm so sorry, Secret Santa. I was swayed by the blurb and the positive reviews, and I now regret putting this book on my wishlist. I kind of hate that you wasted your money on this, even though I truly appreciate you getting it for me. 

Not recommended.

I don't really have anything good to say about this book, sadly. The blurb sounded interesting, but now that I've read the whole thing, that was about all that was interesting about this book. It needs a serious editor, first of all. Run on sentences are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Frankly, this read like a 3rd rate fanfic story, hastily thrown together. There is sooo much overly detailed info for things I didn't care about - like what Rafe's Tavern serves for food, or what Justin is wearing when he comes into the bar, or how Justin takes off his coat - and not enough substance to carry this story line. 

All telling, no showing, consistently dumping irrelevant information.

A detective in the bar, a little drunk, I guess, relays the entire story of the relevant homicide that happened the previous year, and that is how the author chose to give us the background info on what took place. Seriously, a detective doing that in a public bar, drunk or not, should be fired. Secondly, this is all info-dumping, clumsily done at that.

Rafe, who is a tavern owner, also knows all about how floral arrangements are made - even though he has no experience with that type of thing, at least not based on what we know of him. 

Both characters are flat and uninteresting. There is no substance to either of them. The only nice thing I can say about Rafe is that he seems to care very much about Justin, but it smacked of insta-love and didn't feel realistic at all. Justin is all woe is me and depressed, but while his outlook is perhaps understandable, he felt to me like someone who is a doormat, who just lets this stuff happen to him, without ever fighting back. 

I stopped taking notes around 25% of this short novella, and just read the rest of it simply to finish the book. Drama with the ex-boyfriend, who is so one-dimensional it's not even funny, Rafe calling Justin "his little man" without there being a relationship at all in place, Justin being all emo and depressed, and talking about needing money to buy the florist shop (not that there's ever any hint given as to why he thinks his boss is planning to sell it in the first place) - it's all told in such a flat, boring way that I was glad this book was only about 13K words. 

The sex scene at the end - oh dear. First, they have "the talk" about exclusivity. Then they do the deed, and then there's the big HEA that I couldn't for the life of me believe in. It happens too quickly, too unexpectedly for me, and it felt like the author was trying to wrap this up in a neat little bow that had no foundation in anything realistic. 

I can't recommend this at all. There is a good story hidden in this, with a decent plot line, but the writing and lack of serious editing ruined it. And that's without counting the missing proofreading, what with the many, MANY punctuation issues that any proofreader worth his/her salt should have found. 

Yeah. This wasn't a good book for me. 

** I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. A positive review was not promised in return. **