Title: His Favorite Ginger

Author: YORUBOY

Genre: Teen fic

Quick Summary: Remind me why I'm supposed to root for these insufferable sacks of foreskin?

Thoughts:

There's no mistaking that for many people, high school is a nightmare. It doesn't matter who you are. As such, I tend to avoid reading teen fic, because like many others, my own experience was quite the tumultuous one.

The other reason I avoid teen fic is because the ones I've read haven't done much to separate them from each other. And I guess this book managed to slightly make itself stand out? But not really in a great way.

I can't decide what my biggest issue with this book is, but the first one I'll mention is the writing itself. I can tell that this used to be in first person POV because there is many times where it will slip up for a sentence or two and be in first-person. While for the most part most of the mistakes were caught, this book definitely needs another round of edits to get to them all. Same thing with the grammar. But worse than either of these is the actual writing style. It's so ridiculously purple at times and a lot of the figurative language is so strange that instead of painting a more concrete picture, it yanks me super far out of the story. Sometimes, the language is strange, while other times it's outright hilarious... when humor isn't the proper emotion to portray in those moments. When Alejandro and Grayson first make out, for example, the language used to describe it made me laugh out loud. It's such a peculiar scene.

The plot itself is a strange one? I know how it starts, and how it continues, but I don't know much about how it's going to end. Which I guess is the point, but I'm trying to figure out what the overall point of this book is, I guess. And if it's for Al and Grayson to get together, well... I have some issues.

Speaking of,the characters. Grayson is by far the worst of them, but everyone as a whole is some shade of insufferable. Alejandro flip flops between kinda annoying and angsts and coming across as a stereotype. I guess I kinda like him but not by much. And his friends are... terrible. I can understand being scared to come out to them, but Nolan literally threatens him and has displayed violent reactions to gay people in the past, so I'm left wondering why the fuck Al has him as a friend. He's only been at this new school for two/three weeks - it's not like he can't just get new friends. Sounds like he needs them, anyhow.

Also like. I don't know the author's orientation, but I loathe the need to have the mc come out to the most violently homophobic person in the cast. Why did he need to tell him? It creates some conflict I guess but literally what was the entire point. Coming out already has such a disproportionate amount of emphasis placed on it for lgbt kids, and it's kind of uncomfortable seeing that emphasis literally everywhere I go. We don't owe anyone an explanation of who we are. We should be allowed to just. Exist.

The biggest problem, and the reason I did stop reading, is fucking Grayson. The entire book, his characterization has remained consistent. Consistently a douchebag. He's got the same typical douchebag temperament I've seen a hundred times before and he's. Incredibly misogynistic. So much that it disgusts me. And don't get me wrong, Layla isn't entirely at fault, but his behavior borders on the abusive in regards to her. Why is he even dating her when he clearly hates her? When every time he thinks about her, he calls her names? When he talks about her, he barely regards her as a human half the time. And chapter nineteen, the chapter I finally got so fed up I stopped, he becomes the biggest sack of semen-crusted gym socks I have ever read about. And you know what, I can't stand read about him anymore. It's one thing to have an asshole character, cause people have done that before, but it's a whole other to make the narrative around them an annoyance as well.

I don't even care if this isn't a romance. The characters are so insufferable that I don't care what happens to them.