A Prairie Dog's Love Song

In terms of tone and pacing, this wants to be the gay version of a Hallmark holiday movie. In terms of actual content, it's more like someone put a Hallmark Christmas movie, a Lifetime Thanksgiving movie, that one scene in Twilight after Edward leaves Bella and she forgets how to be a functional human, the entire Encore Westerns channel, and several bodice-ripper novels into a blender. They ran it on high for two minutes then poured it into a glass of ice and swirled some Gilmore Girls on top and added some Andy Griffith Show sprinkles (there's literally a Sheriff Taylor) to garnish. Afterward, they set the glass down on a piece of notebook paper where the word “bisexual” had been written and erased. Beside it, a laptop sat, opened to an article criticizing people who partake in sex work; it probably contained a yeehaw-ified version of the word “thot” right before the mid-page ad for horse riding lessons. Also, the glass was painted with a half-naked cowboy riding a unicorn and twirling a lasso made of tinsel.

I wanted to love this one. The premise sounded right up my alley. The high-star reviews said it was cute and fun. I was geared up, ready to read me some fluffy holiday romance about mutual crushes overcoming adversity and forcing their small town to accept who they truly are.

And then I started reading.

See, the trouble with the recipe for this book is that it basically takes everything in the pantry - even the gross things which should've been tossed into the compost months ago - and blends them together with no regard for the dissonance between varied tastes and textures.

When a book tries to be too many things at once, it tends to just be mediocre at a few and terrible at the others, without getting any particular thing right. I found that to be the case, here. While there's room for a magical turnaround of a homophobic town complete with improvised Pride parade in a lighthearted and fluffy romance, that same style of book has no room for a horribly entitled jerkwad of a main character whose entitlement is not only enforced but ultimately the driving factor of the romance. And while there's room for a “to prove we're both gay” scene wherein a guy slams his intended partner onto a bed, strips, tells him to strip, then pins him against the door to keep him from running when he panics in a gritty, dark story... Well, there's no room for such a thing in a lighthearted book like this one. These behaviours aren't challenged, and the story is presented in a way which implies it's intended to be super romantic.

Unfortunately, the tonal dissonance and the elements I found gross pretty much ruined this book for me. Chief among the gross bits are the aforementioned sex scene - which also brings in an edge of bi erasure, where Ben goes from having had sexual relationships with girlfriends and labelling himself as bicurious to labelling himself as gay upon Joshua's insistence over the course of two pages (at longest) - and the way a six-year age gap is handled.

Now, I don't mind the age gap in general. No, what I mind is the frequent references to how Ben and Joshua had a mutual crush while they were younger. Specifically, a flashback early in the book shows 15-year-old Ben and 21-year-old Joshua snuggling and seemingly catching feelings for one another... right after the previous chapter has Joshua think about how he should've acted sooner to secure Ben as his own. (My skin, it crawls with wrongness.) It isn't until basically the final chapter when Joshua clarifies that he didn't start catching sexual feelings until Ben was 17. That, however, feels like a cop-out because between the two points, Ben refers to his ‘boyhood dreams' of being with Joshua; Joshua insists Ben has to be gay because he was clearly crushing by age 10; Ben confirms he's wanted to be with Joshua since he was 11 years old himself; and a few less-direct references are made to how long they've pined after one another.

It's all a bit... much. I think the goal was to add an extra edge of forbidden lust, though I'm not sure why since “gay and closeted in a homophobic backwoods town” seems like plenty enough of that for one short story. But Joshua's intense entitlement issues were what pushed it over the edge of creepiness for me.

This behaviour starts as early as the first page of the first chapter. We get the obvious moment where Joshua is awkwardly aroused by what he sees on Ben's porn profile, and that's what I expected. We also get him wishing that Ben was his and therefore being grossed out that Ben's sleeping with other guys for a living, which is a little on the annoying side but not impossible to accept and still pretty close to expectations. What I didn't expect was for Joshua to be so angry that Ben's doing porn... because he feels that the co-stars in the porn stole Ben's virginity, first kiss, etc. from him. And no, I don't mean he thinks they stole it from Ben. Joshua thinks that he, himself, is somehow entitled to those things from Ben and is so angry about it that he punches his desk and slams his laptop closed. The pattern continues throughout the book, where he seems to think he's entitled to sweep Ben off his feet, make major life choices like having Ben move in with him without even consulting Ben before telling the entire town, trap Ben in a room with him because he wants to have sex to ‘prove Ben's gay,' and so many other things which are less egregious but still red flags. (Case in point: after he's had sexual interaction with Ben once, Joshua gets so angry at the mere idea of other sex workers ever touching Ben again that he wants to take his dad's shotgun and shoot something.)

To make matters worse, Ben is basically just a cardboard cutout. The main takeaways of his personality were that he wants to be free to live as an openly gay man, worries his small town won't accept him, and claims to be unashamed of his sex work yet also is too mortified to ever step foot in his hometown again after someone reveals he's been in gay porn. This could be any character from any number of books. We know he loves the outdoors and farming/ranching, but that's true of the majority of characters in this book. He panics and tries to flee, insists he's bicurious at most... then turns around in Joshua's arms to kiss him when trapped in the room and declares himself gay. Basically: his opinions and actions seem to just conveniently match what's needed. His voice is weak, his presence barely-there... In fact, for the majority of the book, he and Joshua don't even share scenes together because they're in different parts of the country and not contacting each other.

So this is basically the story of an entitled guy who has a tantrum, falls into a depression when he doesn't get his way, then makes the executive decision to implode his crush's life in order to get what he wants... and it works. Oh, and that homophobic town? Surprisingly easily convinced to do a 180 and start supporting and accepting gay people. Because an old man who reads a lot of history books informs them that real cowboys used to fool around with one another when lonesome on the trail. Yep, that's all it takes. And the sheriff bullies the most vocal detractor by outing him as gay (or possibly bi) in front of everyone. Apparently, for some reason with no basis in reality, the guy's hard drive had been seized as evidence when he sued someone else for trademark infringement, so the sheriff knew he had a stash of gay porn and told most of the town. You read that right. The closeted gay/bi man overcompensating with faux bigotry (and/or handling internalized homophobia) gets outed in a horribly invasive way just to serve as a comeback.

I think the saddest part is that I rather enjoyed the light and airy prose. I liked the way Eli Easton portrayed this town in general, the atmosphere, the setting... just not the execution or most of the characters. Or the smut.

Oh, lawd, the smut. Someone's penis - I can't remember if Joshua or Ben - is referred to as “hard and overripe and moist at the head.” I'm sorry, but that brings to mind some really nasty things, all of which require immediate medical assistance. This is also, somehow, my second book this week to refer to intimate actions as being similar to a calf suckling its mother.

Not to kink shame, but I don't particularly like my naughty times to include references to the participants resembling baby farm animals. I can forgive the stray “hung like a horse” or “thick as a bull” or whatever - fun fact, the bull comparison does happen in this book - though they're silly. But a calf? Suckling its mother? I would like to know which author started this trend so I can take a time machine back to their writing desk and furiously erase the catalyst.

But I digress. My point is that: there are things in this one which I wanted to like. The way prairie dogs tie in had so much potential to be cute. The idea of innocent, young crushes lingering and turning into true romance was appealing. Having all this happen in a small town setting, with one character being a sex worker? Yep, I was into it. But the execution is just too lacking for me to latch onto any of those individual pieces and call them diamonds in the rough.

So, yeah. This one was a total bust for me, and so far the second disappointing instalment in my Read A Rainbow challenge for 2021. Here's hoping the next one won't leave me feeling so unimpressed!