Book review: Something Like Summer
Something Like Summer
Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
(2.5)
I didn’t like this book either and it's got great reviews on Goodreads what the hell is wrong with me. I thought it was pretty juvenile (and not in a good way), pointless, way over-dramatic, contrived, with poorly developed characters and not even that well written. I gave it a three on Goodreads but it’s more like a 2.5. [EDIT: Nope, actually, I just went and gave it a 2 instead. Tired of being nice to shitty books.]
So this story is about this guy Ben and sort of his life over a period of like...seven years or so, starting in high school. I thought this was going to be a high school story, and it isn’t, and then I thought it was just going to be a ‘follow this guy’s life and different relationships’ story and it wasn’t, and it turned out to be some big fucking dramatic gay soap opera I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING. It was so poorly plotted and constructed and conceived that I really HAVE seen better soap opera stories (and I’ve watched enough of them to know) and all in all the characters were either completely hateable or not even characterized. The writing itself was pretty poor and so much of the book was crushed down into summaries of time passing and conversations had, so that the characters never got a chance to flourish on their own, basically because the book covered too much time and tried to include way too much so there wasn’t enough space for dialogue and actual chemistry.
So this kid Ben has a big giant lusty crush on this dude Tim who just moved to his town, and he kind of stalks him around in a harmless yet still creepy way. Ben’s openly out and apparently was fucking around with like EVERY DUDE AT SCHOOL and sucking them off on a regular basis until he came out as gay and then none of them wanted anything to do with him which I suppose would be a realistic thing but Ben doesn’t ACT like a person who is sexually experienced. Because if he really was, he would have just approached Tim and tried to set up the same sort of thing with him (and being new to town and the story starting in the summer, Tim wouldn’t have known Ben was gay yet). There was so much telling about things that the characters had done/experienced that's never actually reflected in the characters. We're constantly told Ben loves shopping but the only time he ever mentions the clothes he wears are in the very beginning when he's wearing cast-off grungy clothes from his sister's boyfriend. We never get any sense that he puts thought into his daily appearance and likes looking nice or putting outfits together, despite the fact that it's constantly mentioned that he's going clothes shopping. What we're told and what we see about the characters never meshes, like this next thing I’ll talk about.
So love interest Tim drops this brief thing about how at his old school, his ex-girlfriend went around telling everybody that he raped her because he dumped her. One, this is a pretty problematic thing to include if it isn’t going to be some sort of issue that actually affects the character, because then it just adds to the already problematic attitude we have towards rape as a society and how women have a hard enough time getting people to believe them even if they really were raped, and yet here’s a fantasy situation where a woman wasn’t raped and yet told everyone she was, and they all believed her and then villainized the man. Where, in real life, it probably would have been her who was villainized and blamed, even if she was believed, which would be unlikely in the first place. And then Tim probably would have been slapped with AT LEAST some sort of sexual predator registration requirement if anyone had actually followed up on the accusations (which they must have, if everyone believed this girl) and depending how old he was (it was never explicitly stated ), and for the rest of his life Tim would have to register in every town he went to as a sexual predator due to Megan’s Law (and that law was around in 1996, the time when this part of the book is set) and THIS SHIT CAN ACTUALLY RUIN PEOPLE’S LIVES FOR REAL. But in the book it wasn’t treated like....well. Anything. It was like if his ex girlfriend had been going around telling people he still slept with a night-light. Momentarily embarrassing, but generally very low-level trauma inducing and something you would just get over because it was a stupid thing that happened in stupid high school. And that’s exactly how Tim’s “my ex girlfriend accused me of rape and everyone believed her” thing reads. Like a momentarily embarrassing thing. It doesn’t even affect him in terms of intimacy, like that he is now afraid of trusting people or becoming sexually intimate with them because of what SHOULD have been a really terrible experience. But noooope. I don’t even know how the author was trying to play it or what it was supposed to do to Tim’s characterization, because it was so minor and stupid and pointless.
Anyway, Ben runs over Tim accidentally on purpose on rollerskates and sprains his ankle, then because Tim’s parents were out of town for two weeks he lays up at home for the entire time and Ben like...basically stops going to school to take care of him? This situation was SO. STUPID. It didn’t make sense and I don’t know of any people who would have behaved this way or even though of setting up this kind of situation and Ben’s constant school absences would be noticed (even though there was a thing slipped in there about why they wouldn’t be, but it was still really stupid and there’s a lot of OTHER reasons why it’d be noticed other than “only second period takes role call”) and I get that kids don’t want to tell their parents things that have happened sometimes but like THE WHOLE THING WAS DUMB AS SHIT and so impractical it just threw me out of any sort of realism of the story. It was contrived in such a ridiculous way and it didn’t really make for any natural characterization because Ben and Tim had literally never exchanged words before Ben ran him over and then suddenly they’re acting like they’ve known each other for years. No slow progression of even friendship, it was literally total strangers one day and best buddies the next. And there’s a weird thing with Tim’s girlfriend and how she won’t “put out” because Tim isn’t circumcised and it weirds her out so literally Tim just invited Ben over one day to take care of what his girlfriend wouldn’t but there was absolutely no UST between them prior to this or any hint that Tim was...ANYTHING, even interested in Ben as a sexual relief, shit was just happening with absolutely no believability or build up or anything. And then suddenly they’re boyfriends and having sex all over the place for a while and then finally they have a fall out where Ben tells Tim’s Catholic parents that he’s gay and they’re like NO SON OF OURS WILL HAVE A GAY FRIEND so Tim breaks up with him and it’s all teenager dramatic and stupid and then suddenly BAM smash cut to three years later.
So then the book moves on to Ben’s relationship with this new guy Jace who is a super nice guy but Ben is basically not over Tim and then Tim shows up back in his life and it’s like a constant thing about Will Ben Cheat On Jace With Tim and OF COURSE HE DOES, and then it’s just a giant soap opera mess and continues in that vein FOREVER and I can’t even summarize any more of this story without just starting to yell about how stupid all of it was.
The characters were also completely unlikeable. Tim also had no characterization. Jace really didn’t either, although he was a much nicer guy than Tim. And Ben was a complete asshole even though as the narration (3rd person) you’re supposed to identify with him and see stuff from his POV but really the only worthwhile thing he ever did in the entire story was to confront Allison’s (Ben’s best friend) drunken abusive one-dimensional father character after he’d hit her. That was really his one upstanding moment and the rest of the story he’s a whiney, greedy, thoughtless asshole. Tim is worse though, Tim NEVER has a redeeming moment and it’s because so much of the book is summarized and only the Big Dramatic Moments are written into anything resembling full scenes, and Tim is always being an asshole in the Big Dramatic Moments. Jace’s Big Dramatic Moments are always about him being like, the nicest guy on the planet and Ben’s responses to him are always these huge distrustful spiteful rages, like when Jace gets briefly distant because he’s busy moving into Ben’s town as a surprise and Ben of course immediately suspects cheating and the death of the relationship because HE DOESN’T TRUST THIS GUY and they don’t actually even sit down and talk anything out, just like every time this kind of shit happens on TV shows where a guy is trying to propose to his girlfriend and his slightly off behavior makes her immediately suspect infidelity, I hate that plot device so much it is such a giant trust issue in the relationships of these people and yet nobody treats it like it is, BUT IT IS. These sorts of things are PROBLEMS in relationships; does nobody actually understand what trust means anymore? Ugh.
Another problem; Ben and Tim’s relationship was in high school. They never spoke two words to each other before Ben ended up nearly LIVING FULL TIME IN TIM’S HOUSE due to that complete and ridiculous plot contrivance that is really one of the dumbest things I have ever read (in fact this entire book, I have read better on fictionpress. That’s one of the real reasons I’m angry at it, because it reads like a thirteen year old girl’s first slash story). And so they really don’t have a mesh of personalities or even appear to LIKE each other, other than ommmgg sooo haaaawt. And Tim is that generic charismatic “I’ll sleep with you but I’m not gay and we’re just fuck-buddies” asshole. But their complete lack of connection on anything but a WE LIKE EACH OTHER’S DICKS level is what makes it so completely unbelievable that they’re constantly drawn to each other for THE REST OF THEIR LIVES and just can’t HELP but constantly get back together regardless of the people around them or their feelings. Ben and Tim have nothing in common, nothing they talk about, nothing they enjoy doing together other than fucking because theirs was a high school relationship, based off hormones. They never really had a conversation about anything because of how much of the damn book was summarized and abridged. So the fact that this is portrayed as some deep soul connection that just keeps them constantly unable to forget each other is just bullshit.
Jace is actually the nicest character in the damn book and I felt really bad for him the entire time because Ben was a complete asshole to him, never fully trusted him, abused his trust in return and completely took it for granted, and basically Jase was a really great stand-up honest guy and Ben was a slimy little weasel. When Tim pays a guy to put a fake note on Jase’s door to make it look like Jase was cheating on Ben in order to break them up, AND BEN BELIEVES IT, and then even later on finds out Tim did it and is essentially OKAY WITH THAT, I was like-okay, these two are major league fucking assholes, apparently they just deserve each other, but I hated reading about these guys. I would have thrown the book across the room if it wasn’t on my Kindle.
And then (SPOILERS) Jase dies in a total soap opera fashion, but there’s still the feeling that Ben was only sticking around before that happened because he felt guilty or obligated because they were married and clearly Jase didn’t matter to him in the long run. There’s even a really melodramatic line where Ben is like “I WILL NEVER LOVE AGAIN” and then literally the next section is him running into Tim YET AGAIN two years later and they get back together and it’s supposed to be all dramatic and what a big romantic conclusion to this big romantic story but honestly it was basically two giant assholes deciding to finally inflict their assholery onto each other forever instead of innocent bystanders. A fitting ending perhaps, but loathsome. And I was just angry that Jase died in such a soap-opera, convenient, out of NOWHERE way with absolutely no hints about it or any sort of prior mentions of Jase's health or even a similar condition in his family that would have made it look less like a complete plot contrivance. I probably would have minded it less if there hadn’t been that big dramatic declaration by Ben, because it actually IS OKAY to have another relationship after one ends even if one person died, and people do it all the time but just as often people won't have another, but don’t treat one relationship like the end-all be-all if IT CLEARLY ISN’T TRUE. Because then you just look like an awful hypocrite. Ugh Ben was just loathsome.
Also all the girls were either bitches or stereotypes. Really pretty negative portrayal of women (and men!) in general in this book. Even though Allison was a fairly big character she was pushed around and formed into a shape by the plot and not really her own developed character; I'm not even sure why she was there except she was the only person Ben ever treated with any sort of consideration and even then he was still a pretty shitty friend on a day to day basis.
There’s another book by this guy that’s “Tim’s story” and fuck it. Juuuust fuck it. I have no desire to read it. This book was such a mess and so poorly written and it was like an American soap opera met a teenage girl’s first attempt at m/m fiction and had a stunted little baby together and I was just really angry at how bad the whole thing was on so many levels. Ugh. If you’ve read and liked this book can you please tell me why it’s good? I just don’t understand!