Just a Game

This book tells the story of Preston, the first person narrator who's intelligent yet not egotistical, and his best friend Luke, who is a very chill surfer guy... except the small issue of his casual homophobia. Luke's a trust fund kid and Preston lives with him, but is quite poor on his own while going through college. They're sort of an ‘opposites attract' friendship, but nowhere near the “hangdog” and “snarky genius” which the book's description claims - and that's a good thing.

No, they're not archetypes at all: they're believable as actual people and real college guys - complete with casual homophobia and misogyny in speech patterns, which surprisingly didn't bother me like it normally would. For these two, it feels authentic and not extraneous. Yes, a bit hard to read sometimes, but not infuriating like it would be if it felt gratuitous or as if it were not a valid part of the overarching plot. In fact, one of the central conflicts is Preston's uncertainty about his own sexuality coupled with fear that he'd lose Luke as a friend if Luke believed he were gay. And considering some of the wild antics they get up to while their silly games grow increasingly closer to - and ultimately cross the line of - an outright BDSM arrangement? Yeah, it's a logical fear to have.

I can't say the BDSM aspects were entirely believable in terms of reality, but that can be said of basically every erotic BDSM story I've ever consumed. And this one? Is. Actually. Good. Yes, the exaggerated punctuation is required in this case. This book managed to take all the ingredients of something I'd return to Kindle Unlimited before finishing it and mixed them up with several things I love to make something I actually enjoyed from the first page to the last.

There's a slow burn from friends to kinky bondage game partners. There's a discovery of very complicated sexualities which have no easy labels. Though maybe not as deep as I'd prefer, there's character exploration. The erotic bits are steamy and a lot of the kinky bits fit my interests more than maybe I should admit.

On the flip side, there are a lot of slurs and misogynistic comments. There's a flamboyant gay guy who's used as a plot device villain. The kink veers slightly into squicky directions a few times. Preston holds back on the safeword a few times when he knows he should use it. Luke is a little too easy to flee and leave Preston in a state of subdrop. First person POV smut is often something I find awkward and uncomfortable to read.

Yet, here we are. Put all these things together and we apparently get a story I love to pieces and may very well purchase to read again someday. That's right: I enjoyed this book. Despite odds being out of favour for it, this book appealed to me and kept me entertained. Though quite littered with typos, the writing flows well enough I never felt the urge to complain. It's even so thoroughly engaging that the only breaks I took from reading were when life needed attention or I didn't have enough privacy to feel comfortable reading the erotica-heavy text around others who might peek.

I'm glad I gave this a chance, and I suspect I'll end up pondering the story again in the next few days. If you don't mind typical ‘dudebro' casual homophobia and a relationship which defies all attempts at labeling - and you aren't bothered by heavily erotic BDSM stories - I highly recommend giving this book a chance. If you're like me, you may just find yourself having unexpected emotions and enjoying the wild ride.

I've sat with this story in my head for a quite a few days, trying to figure out if I was just on a story high, and would just end up being be too gushy, which would be something the MCs of this story will never be, and hate, gushy. Ultimately the more time passed, and after talking it out with friends I'm just going to accept that I loved this, and revel in finding a story that unexpectedly grabbed me and dug deep.

*I'll try not to spoil anything in my review/thoughts, but if you want to just savor a story that's different from our regularly scheduled Romance/HEA program, and be pleasantly surprised, don't even scrutinize the cover or continue reading. I won't be offended. I only looked closely at the cover after I was done. Can't say I'm sorry. If you have triggers, tropes, or kinks you'd rather not indulge in, maybe read the blurb.***

In broad strokes this is the story of two young men who are almost at the end of their college years. They've known each other from the days of summer camp, and though geographical distance created a wedge in adolescence, since starting college they've lived together, shared their lives, and become inseparable. They're your average bro/dudes: Luke is the embodiment of the California surfer boy, all golden hues, and laid back personality, while Preston is a bit different, a bit of a book nerd, who's majoring in French, reads Balzac, and prefers wine over beer. Despite these surface differences they almost share a brain. One of their favorite entertainments, during the scorching days of summer, when Preston only has one class and Luke just surfs, is to play at being spies. Somehow, probably due to boredom, the game changes into ‘kidnapper & his victim'. The results are surprising to Luke and Preston, and they were for me too.

Perhaps you've guessed what the game leads to, and I won't go into details, but I promise you'll still be surprised, and in my case, it was a good surprise. Though I read lots of MM, I'm well aware that a giant chunk of it is written by women, and I'm always looking for good male authors because I'm interested in a male POV and [a:Thomas Carver|10289466|Thomas Carver|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png]'s writing really worked for me. He delivered a story written from the perspective of his characters who are young men. He didn't try to make them or their journey fit into a romance trope, MM or otherwise. There are no grand declarations of any sort, just two young people stumbling into something that they'd probably not contemplated before, but just might work for them, on their own terms. It was liberating. I'm all for people not being aholes, being SSC, and all that jazz, but I also know that RL doesn't hold to a guide book, I like stories that reflect that, and this one delivered in spades.

I like that though these were young men the author didn't dumb them down or make them wise beyond their years. This is a bit of a chamber piece, where only one other character is really seen on page, and the narrative oozed that whole close quarters vibe, so apropos for the story, in which you can only really see and feel what's in front of you, a yearned for isolation of two. Other than that I was giddy and delighted by some beautiful turns of phrase and images like this one, where Luke, at the beach, and gets a hug from a friend:
“He twisted in her grip and returned the hug. The stripped-back arms and back of his wetsuit spun with him, like a neoprene shadow of his upper torso.”
... or here's Preston describing their friendship:
“We didn't talk about games, or about girls, or about hide and seek. He talked about surfing. I talked about French poetry. Neither of us really understand much of the other's interests, but that, too, was a kind of friendship: letting people talk about what you didn't understand, and caring anyway.”
... and this one, which I'll add to the nuggets that make me understand BDSM relationships, not being a practitioner myself:"My heart swelled with a strange feeling, not cruelty but something else. I wasn't sure what it was, not at first, until I traced a line up his side into sparse, long hairs of his armpits, and watched him thrash like a dying fish, coughing the desperate and humorless laugh of the tortured. I was proud of him, I realized. Proud of him for taking it."

Short story is I loved it. Along with [b:Thrown Off the Ice|43233514|Thrown Off the Ice|Taylor Fitzpatrick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1544806708l/43233514.SY75.jpg|67083406], this is one of my favorite standalone reads this year, and I'm not talking just romance. I like how the author went for truth over tropes and told a story that felt authentic to the characters and the snippet of time we spent with them. Sticklers may not see it at first, but to me, this is a romance that will pass the test of time. Surely our greedy selves want to see more on page but I had no problem imagining them with a HEA on their own making.