Amy Lane - The Locker Room

The Locker Room by Amy Lane

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is really only one thing I don't love about this book: the cover.

Okay, to elaborate...

I stumbled across this book purely by accident - and then almost didn't read it after one look at the cover, because really, I have at least 4 friends who could've done a better job. Actually, I could have done a better job. But you know what they say about not judging a book by its cover.

First off, I like the tone in which this book is written. It's a pretty slow paced, dry recounting of the story of two men who have shared almost all their life with each other. There's no flowery prose, no unneeded descriptions, no distractions from the actual story. But that does in no way mean that this book isn't interesting, quite the opposite.

I have to confess that I sometimes had to bite my fingers so I wouldn't comment on other reviews. Both those saying 'oh my god, how could they do that when they really love each other?!' as well as those swooning over soul mates and true love. Because it seems to me that those people haven't really thought about what they read.

To me, most M/M stories are light reading. Fun, but nothing that stays in mind for long - or even five minutes after finishing the book. Not so this one. I think this was the first one that really got me thinking about what I had just read.

It's a love story, yes. But it's not actually as romantic as some reviews would make you think.

There's one thing you need to keep in mind here: Xander was a victim of abuse and neglect, in fact he was on his way to starving when he and Chris first met. He was fourteen years old, and had already learned not to trust anybody but himself, because nobody, absolutely nobody else would ever stand up for him, or try to help. And he had learned that lesson well.

Chris and his family were the first and only ones who ever offered him any kind of comfort. Especially Chris, who somehow saw more in that awkward, silent, tall youth than others and wanted to be his friend.

So those two latched on to each other - Xander desperately needing a friend and someone he could trust, Chris desperately wanting to help Xander, but also depending on his calm stability. And they stayed together like that, through high school, through college, through their professional career. Becoming lovers was practically inevitable.
Can you say co-dependency? I'm sorry, but what is supposed to be so romantic about that?

They had to separate for six months, six months during which they could talk on the phone, via webcam, where they could visit each other - and they simply couldn't function like that. That's not actually romantic, that's not even especially healthy.

I'm not saying that they don't love each other, they do. But the readers really should put away those rose tinted glasses there.

The other part, people being outraged about them sleeping with women while being in a relationship and soul mates and so on, and how dare they?!

This isn't a fantasy novel. It's also not science fiction. It's a very realistic book, and in this reality for two NBA players to come out is pretty much unthinkable if they ever want to play again. That's the world we live in, like it or not. Add in the fact that aside from Chris, basketball was the only thing that kept Xander going during his childhood (and he had been playing ball long before he ever met Chris) and was one huge comfort zone to him which he wouldn't give up as long as he didn't really, absolutely have to - do I have to spell this out?

This whole outrage over them 'cheating' on each other is ridiculous to me. For one, it wasn't cheating. They were both doing it, they both knew about it, they talked about it before. All it would have taken was one of them saying stop. But they didn't, at least for a while, because with a coach always on their case and rumors starting about them in the team, what choice exactly did they have if they wanted to stay together and keep playing?

Like I said, there is a lot in this book to think about. It also makes me wonder just how many men and women are caught in such a situation, and hope that there'll be a time when being different will be, well, normal.

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This had to happen...

Over the last few days I have been very pleasantly surprised to discover some m/m books that I really do like, thanks to Goodreads' 'People who liked this, also liked...' feature.

And then I start reading another book that has an amazingly good rating at Goodreads, and since this particular list hadn't let me down yet, well. Don't know if I'll finish reading it though.

About four pages in I realized that this had to have been a RPS fanfic originally, because one of the main characters is - not just reminds me of, no, is - Jared Padalecki. Unmistakably. So the other guy is Jensen, and his nine year old son got his freckles and mouth and eyes from him, and etc.
Then we have Jensen's- sorry, I mean Andrew's friend, who plays guitar in a band and is named Gary Stevens. At that point I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Then there's Jared's- oops, I mean Nathan's best bud, who is a loudmouth and brash, and his wife doesn't like him at all, and - you get the picture. Hi Chad.

I don't even know what bothers me about this so much. Except that I just don't like to read RPS, and the author of this book really didn't do anything but change the names before she sent it to the publisher. There is really no way to not notice that this is a fanfic. What amazes me, is that it's not just the characters but also the way this book is written that blinks at me like a big honking neon sign saying FANFICTION.

So? I read fanfiction. I have read thousands of fanfics over the years, so why does this bother me? I don't know. Maybe it's simply the fact that I know this is really a J2 RPS story.

(Although, after I read some reviews I'm almost sure I wouldn't like this book very much for other reasons, too.)

The good, the bad, and the...

Because I have been stuck in the book I was reading, I decided that some distraction in the form of light reading was in order. Which for me means that I randomly open a book of my gay romance collection. What people tend to call gay romance.

I say it's light reading for several reasons, the most obvious being that m/m books tend to be amazingly short. I'm not sure I'd call a story that is only 90 pages long - small pages with big font at that - a novel. But alright. (To be fair, only two of the 11 novels I've read last week were under 100 pages long.)

As for the other reasons...

Mostly, there seem to be two categories when it comes to 'gay romance': sex or schmoop. Or both. You can find lots of books where the sex scenes take up more space than anything halfway resembling plot. Or you stumble across those books that are so cheesy you might be in danger of clogging your arteries just from reading. It gets worse when you find something that's cheesy beyond belief and contains lots of sex scenes. And not even well written sex scenes, oh no.

As someone who has read tons of fanfiction over the years I have read enough bad sex scenes to not even really notice anymore. To be honest, I have read so many sex scenes, that by now I usually just gloss over them or skip them entirely. Believe me, there will come a point at which you've read it all, probably at least half a dozen times. The sad truth is: just because someone is a published author doesn't automatically mean they write good erotica. In fact, all of the best sex scenes I have read have been written by fanfic authors. Go figure.
Also, if you think that male authors would be better at writing m/m scenes you'd be sadly mistaken.

To get back on track with this post, between the bad/too many sex scenes and the schmoopy cheese, the one thing that usually is missing is the plot. And characterization.

All this means that reading these books may be fun (I would hope so, at least), but it sure as hell isn't something that requires you to think or even pay very much attention. Light reading.

What annoys the hell out of me and can take a lot of fun out of reading them, is the often bad editing. A whole bunch of these novels has only been published as ebooks. And a lot of ebook publishers don't spend money on editors. Spelling and grammar errors, continuity SNAFUs, sentences that just don't make any sense - it's all there. Better get used to it if you want to read these books.

There are exceptions of course.

The first books that always come to mind are Marquesate's Special Forces series. These books deserve to be called books by the page count alone. There's plot, there are fleshed out characters, there's development, there's a level of realism that's shaking at times. (Hint: you can download the books for free at her homepage.)

There's Sean Kennedy's Tigers and Devils, which is funny, intelligent, and doesn't contain even one explicit sex scene.

There are, of course, Josh Lanyon's books, which are mostly mystery and crime with a main character that happens to be gay. I recommend reading the Adrien English Mysteries and Holmes and Moriarity.

As for me, I'm still on this reading binge. Until I'm starting to overload, or until I read something that's bad enough to make me not want to open another of these books for a while. Let's see what happens first.