That'll teach me not to start a book in 1 in the morning. ( )

A light, easy read that is fun, sorta gossipy and hot! I really enjoyed the author's style. ( )

Read for m/m team bingo challenge. My short review. ( )

First up, I should mention that I helped Charles edit this book. However, I don't think that precludes me from rating it as really the book was there before I started.

Sure I helped him tweak a few paragraphs around and got him to expand a couple of sections, but my input was minor.

What I really liked about this book was that he got the voice, thoughts, insecurities and motivations of a young man just right.

It wasn't an easy job writing a book where the background is the scene of the genre it's set in. Charles manages to tread a fine line between enjoying the people that write in the genre without satirising them. I think he succeeded in doing that simply because he likes and respects his peers.

Guys the age of his protagonists don't see the subtleties of a person's nature, so keeping his secondary characters simple (and in some respects cartoonish) worked for me. Sure, Marquerite, might make some people squirm, because she does things we all hope we don't do. But her personality needs to be like that for the plot to work.

As a first published story, I think "Jump First" is a brilliant start, and no doubt Charles will soon be helping me like I helped him. That's what critique partners do.

The book succeeds in being exactly what the writer wanted it to be, a whimsical exploration of coming out, first love and two people sharing a love of writing.

I enjoyed helping Charles add those last little finishing touches. ( )

I think Jump First was intended to be a light coming of age story, but I read a touch of bitterness that made it not so light to my eyes. First of all, while the author tried to make Marguerite a nice character to the reader’s eyes, at least at the beginning, I had an instinctively aversion on her regards. She seemed to me fake, and I tried to understand if the author was referencing to someone real, or if he was simply directing a group. In any case my first reaction to her was in the end the right one, even if she is trying to make amend when the story closes.

Aside for this side of the story, the rest of the plot is about two teenagers falling in love; Heath and his high school mate Ryan have a lot in common, but they are also desperately shy. It will be not the easy “jump” of the title for them to realize they have feeling for each other, but once they do, there is really no drama for them. They are young, they are trouble-free, and the future is bright for them. They have also probably a career ready in front of them, and I can see them becoming an upper class suburban couple, maybe even with a kid or two, or maybe a dog (or two!).

I wondered a little on the author, if this was a story taken by his own experience. If I have to trust the bio at the end of the book, he is a married man in a same-sex couple… maybe this is explaining a little his attitude towards the character of Marguerite, but it’s also explaining Heath and Ryan’s relationship: if you are part of an happy and steady couple, you are probably able to instill this positive attitude in your teenager characters, if you have it, why not prospect it to your own characters?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004Z9A91W/?tag=elimyrevandra-20