Redirection

I ended up waiting to pair my read with the release of the audio by [a:Charlie David 2895612 Charlie David https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1461856493p2/2895612.jpg], life got busy, other reads came and went and I just got back to North & Shaw and their super bumpy relationship road. I'm glad I took the respite because these two don't know how to do easy & sweet.Can you just jump into this series here? I wouldn't recommend it. The relationship between them and their individual histories has been teased out in the previous books and we are now getting to the part where the truly thorny things are being addressed. This book belongs to North. His still unresolved relationship with his soon to be ex-husband Tucker, the why & how he ended up with Tucker, his fraught relationship with his father, a bit about his own identity as a gay man, and most importantly his helplessness when it comes to his attachment & attraction to Shaw. There is of course a case and a victim I couldn't have cared less about save as it serves as a mirror (a horror funhouse one) to who they are or could have been given the time, place, and society they came up in. I enjoyed it way more than expected. I confess to sometimes being annoyed by the infamous N&S banter, which is charming to most readers, but I like to imbibe in small doses. Additionally the way they deal with serious issues affecting their relationship strikes me as a tad childish but then I remember that they are men, gay men, and that (much to my chagrin) the 20's are now the teens when it comes to people's development. Despite all of it I loved this entry in the series and it was in no small part because the author has never shied away from going into situations & places that perhaps many romance readers might recoil from, and he doesn't do it here either. He presents the nitty gritty of the lives of modern day gay men, the hookup culture, the casual sex that's just that, sex, the drug use, the self doubt, the acceptance, partial or completely denied by society and/or loved ones. How it affects the way they see themselves & others. It gets deep. My other cause for relief & joy was that Pari & Truck are barely in it

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: 2023 N&S Rereadathon - the low-sodium addendum :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧(spoilers littered throughout)

[rating pending - in certain respects, round 2 is giving Redirection > Codirection, but some parts are still stinging like a fresh slap even after a year's distance lol] this is North's Wayward era, where we encounter a rendering so hypocritical, so self-serving, so delusional, and so toxically possessive that my head couldn't stop spinning like a dreidel at 2x speed. while Misdirection ended on the best of intentions, the intervening months of hastily redrawn boundaries to friends with benefits portended my draining sanity.

in the face of so many of North's actions screaming red flags, i made it a point to grant him as much leeway as i, being the bearer of grudges that i am, am capable of. North and emotions are like oil and water; however, the extent of his EI deficit only registered after he consciously voiced the pattern of his abusive relationship with Tucker as mimicking the lessons of his father, of conditioned tolerance for abuse to live and prosper (“was I a bad kid?”). 26 years and he connects the dots for the first time ever. this isn't a mere delay, but a complete stagnation.

North's journey is a study of what it means when your upbringing teaches you to spurn tears and compassion, that violence is the solution, that nothing says masculinity more than prioritizing your pride and dignity, when you are trying to form and maintain a healthy relationship - even after jeopardizing one to the extent that he has. in line with my Hazard lite argument, there is a lot of similar unlearning what they believe they are worthy of and dismantling fears that the past repeats itself, and often that bumpy process manifests in violence. throughout the book, North's running into walls with Tucker and with his dad - and any effort to depart from the abusive status quo is met with a prompt smackdown. only with Shaw does he finally start to see gentleness as a strength and something he can display and receive, but there is so much work to be done on himself before he can stop shying away.

the hardest pill to swallow is North's treatment of Shaw, leading him on because he doesn't know how to confront his own inner turmoil. he's already dictating the direction of their relationship, but now he's not-so-subtly taunting Shaw with their “only friends” status in this asinine hot & cold routine of feigned machismo and nonchalance. don't even get me started on the jealous horns that spring forth whenever anyone dares breathe in Shaw's direction.

there's an undeniable selfishness in wanting them without having to put in any of the work. the mixed signals, overwriting of Shaw's feelings and hopes, exploiting Shaw's love to play him like a fiddle, whittling down what they have to good camaraderie and a good f*ck - it's such a blatant reduction of their feelings. i have never seen Shaw's smile drop faster than after each of North's reminders. there is a degree of emotional manipulation here that's surely meant to make the reader uncomfortable - consider it a success with how filled with knots my stomach was by the end and remains whenever my thoughts cycle back to this book.

North is fully aware of the effects of his actions on Shaw, but he cannot stop. it was like some twisted way of tricking himself that he still had Shaw so long as he had him in bed.

watching North create his own prison and throw away the key was torturous.

Shaw. not without fault, Shaw repeats his parents' ineffectual way of dealing with feelings by forcing conversations down to the last letter of whatever communication handbook they're following. Shaw is so verbal with his concern, but while he comes with good intentions, he is overly desperate to pinpoint the problem and make North happy that it blinds him to reality. Shaw's ceaseless insistence that North reconcile with Tucker is another show of this romanticization. this need to communicate threw me back to Triangulation: one of Shaw's biggest hang-ups when it comes to North is how North shuts him out. failure to communicate sets off every single one of Shaw's fears of losing him, but let it be known that North can barely acknowledge, let alone articulate, the storm in his chest.

the incident. North retreating back to Tucker as an action in and of itself makes perfect sense in theory. despite the abuse, or rather in many ways because of it, the Laguerre household is familiar. it is a life he knows, and one in which he understands the role he plays. he can trick himself into thinking the floor he walks isn't rock bottom, that he isn't caught in some mad scramble for a semblance of control and belonging. the kind acceptance of Tucker's parents juxtaposed with the abuse of North's dad draws him even deeper into this farce. ultimately, the sex scene with Tucker serves as a wake up call, a chance to escape the cycle he's so dazedly drawn to.

i know this scene wasn't intended to be a punishment, so to speak, for Shaw (or North for that matter), but in many ways, the parallels of being in Vie's head in The Mortal Sleep when he's fornicating with Emmett and doesn't give a second thought to Austin - it's demoralizing. to be in the head of someone who is so wrapped up in the escape, funhouse reflections, and bodily pleasure that it gives off the impression that the other guy is chopped liver, it's a strain for me as the reader.

which leads me to the other aspect that disconnected me from the scene and North: how he could still enjoy the physicality of sex with Tucker to the extent that he did. an impressive show of self-delusion that i beg whoever is listening to never let me witness again.

rather oblivious to his own emotions, North's pov understandably offers only scant pockets of awareness in the grand scheme of events, but exchanging the narrative's emotional apex, where the scales supposedly fall from his eyes, for a piecemeal second-hand retelling; permitting North to revert back to pre-Redirection settings in a wink without so much as a by-my-leave... i'm beating the air at this point, but let me mourn the lost potential of including North's epiphany and mental play-by-play that brought him back to Shaw.

clearly there are many readers who have connected to the way the story's written, and in no way is this to discount what GA's writing has achieved - i could only dream of producing an atom of the genius he creates - but when the undercurrent is as unsure and shaky as its characters' fears and anxieties, a little solidity can go a long way in bringing about closure of the satisfying sort.

the same can be said for North and his dad. their conversations were powerful and emotional and necessary in cataloguing a whole index of generational failings. but when late stages of cancer can't stop a feeble and dying David McKinney from hitting his son, how does a heart attack set them back on the path to reconciliation? why now? i'm so used to Greg's usual conscientious character work that i feel robbed with so many meaty parts transpiring in places i can't greedily peep on. even the innocuous recruitment of Zion as a per diem Borealis operative was left off the record - he showed up on the roster one day and has been on the payroll since. these are a few of the holes i've encountered with this series.

the mystery. convenient confessions, conveniently missing sons, convenient comas (is the poor lady still comatose??), and three too many arbitrary interruptions right when N&S are on the cusp of saying more - but (a big but) GA never fails to make a case entertaining to read, even if some concessions have to be made to the magical plot fairies