I was mostly hoping here for an amusing receptacle for teh pr0n. I would certainly be happy if it turned out to be at all engaging, intelligent, witty, or interesting, but the goal was characers and situation that were likable and provided a little tension to make the sex hotter ^_^

Initially I was (a bit to my surprise) finding I was getting this. The writing was nothing interesting and transitions from thoughts or point of views were sometimes awkward or abrupt, but it wasn't too distracting. There was a humorous tone, something I almost always appreciate, and though most of the humorous comments weren't as witty or inventive as one might like and didn't exactly make me want to laugh, it didn't come off as too forced as some failed attempts at humor I've seen in some novels. The mains were a little too nice and charming for their own goods, but their earnestness and awkwardness was enough to fend off most of my aversion to this and just accept them as decently constructed for some nice smexing, which, because it WAS all around pretty decent for this kind of thing, I found myself to be looking forward to, and even open to the idea this may even turn out to be better once we get to know the characters better and more conflict is introduced.

...But pretty quickly, things started going downhill. The awkward transitions in the writing became more pronounced. At some points it would even go from having a detailed blow-by-blow account of the happenings and then suddenly switch to short blurbs of exposition detailing scenes one would expect to hear about. I suppose it's understandable if nothing important happens in a scene so you just don't want to give it any time, happens lots of times in novels. But I think this may be the most lack of finesse in handling such situations I have ever seen.

The humor started getting more forced (in particular, the main character has a best friend Chaz who's got the whole 'witty fem gay man' thing going on, and who loves to banter at length with his mate. stale, pointless, and utterly uninteresting), and the cute earnest awkwardness of the mains devolves into 'OMG It's just the first date but don't you just have a cosmic sense we are MEANT FOR EACH OTHER!?!?' The whole perfectly nice and charming mains thing is something I usually frown upon in most non-read-for-porn books, but I was taking it pretty well here. The opt for 'we have a cosmic connection' on the first date rather than building any sort of vestige of bond through, oh, say, character interaction, though, was just plain lame. Again, I don't expect amazing, original interactions here, but opting out of it completely? Lame, lame, lame.

And, consequently, because of these little flaws (particularly the completely dropped ball in the area of characters), I stopped caring about seeing them have sex. Which, as the writing was becoming increasingly disappointing, completely took away reason to read the book. Initially I still intended to finish it as it was so short, but when life drew me away for weeks and when I finally returned to the book, only to find the first chapter upon my return starts out with MORE PAGES OF THE USELESS BANTER FROM CHAZ AND CO. ON TELEVISIONS SHOWS, I simply gave up. There are better stories on my shelf waiting to be read. There are better stories FULL OF POINTLESS PORN on my shelf waiting to be read.

Maybe this novel redeems itself later on. Maybe the porn was like, really, really, really good. But the half I read? After the decent start up, utterly miserable. ( )