My Gay Geek Crush

I did enjoy reading this but not enough to say it was a good book. The way it played out seemed, I dunno forced. Clark was right about Trent not being gay. Curious maybe, but Trent himself said he’d never really considered it until Clark. These two truths made the big rain drama scene seem forced. Clark wrote a love letter, someone outed this to the world and now he has to deal with it. In the middle of rain, the perfect way to handle it would’ve been deciding whether his embarrassment is worth letting his best friend fail. Choosing to put it all aside and run out to help him would’ve been genius. Followed up by the ending that actually transpired, even better. But that isn’t what happened.

Instead, it went the ‘Trent is failing because of me liking him route’ so he runs out there and says it’s all a joke. He does this because if he is the problem running out in the rain is the obvious choice to fix it. Trent is rightfully mad and there’s all this drama over nothing. But that’s not good enough. When Trent comes to have this talk he’s been trying to have the entire middle section of this book Clark is still trying to combat the situation from the ‘straight boy is embarrassed gay boy likes him,’ angle when, in the middle of the rain, Trent specifically said he wants to talk to him and he wasn’t mad when he said it. The only thing he said with anger was he was trying to contact Clark all day. Which, as romance novels go, Clark dutifully ignored to babble on about how the letter was a ‘joke’. How clear does Trent have to be about wanting to talk to him? Sigh.

It’s so, so easy to get on board with and enjoy the straight boy going gay without all the ‘it can never be’ not only before the feelings are out in the open but after. Some books go so far that even after a weekend or a full week together somehow none of that translates into the other guy actually wanting them. It’s not unique to this story. Even when the signs are ten times more obvious than in this book the protagonist is still singing the tune of they don’t really like me. It kind of takes the joy out of the payoff when the characters aren’t allowed to be human and enjoy their fantasy without having to constantly remind the reader it can never be.

That and, if all his information was on the computer. It’s hard to believe that Clark’s nemesis didn’t steal the formula. No one could be that dense. His only motive was to embarrass Clark and not get rich? The moment the computer got stolen that was my first thought. Like the secret is in someone else’s hands. This isn’t going to end well. Exposing the letter was a given, but just smashing the computer and moving on was so easy. If it was all about the letter another way could’ve been used. Even if I suspend bucket loads of reality to buy into the romance this is still a stretch. Even being caught on camera he still had time to steal it and hide it somewhere. It’s just too big for the little bit of weight it got. Most importantly I can’t see someone like Clark, leaving his laptop alone in the middle of a school campus. It’s literally his life as a robotics nerd. It didn’t fit.

For the most part, this was a sweet insta-love tale that was short and to the point. It could’ve been a touch more even for a short story if it was in third person. Like the end with the news reports and other such things, it could’ve been felt by the readers as it happened instead of Clark telling us it happened. I’m here for first-person romance but when it comes to things like that it’s hard to experience Trent losing sponsorships, and gaining some, how he reacts to the press and how that affects the relationship of two separate entities when we are stuck in the window of just one person. It almost feels like it’s better to just avoid anything the main character isn’t involved in. A different perspective definitely would’ve helped especially during the big dramatic rain scene so we can feel just how annoyed Trent was for a few moments. And the most glaring point about the POV is the title says ‘My Gay Geek Crush’ so I went into this, first preson or third, expecting it to be from the jocks point of view. Based on that alone this book is a big miss because whether out or not I was expecting Trent to at least know he was gay and be struggling with coming out to his crush.

It’s a good read but had a few quirks that, unfortunately, aren’t my favourite things to read when I’m in a romance novel. Most people probably won’t care. They probably read the books specifically for this kind of weird drama. But even coming in this for the fantasy and escapism that is reading there are just some things I can’t fully suspend belief for. So like I said, I did enjoy it a good bit but I was also frustrated enough leave with the experience of this book being just okay.

I probably won’t dig into the second one because triangles are not my thing and the end of this story specifically mentions an ex filing a paternity suit so that’s a hard no for me. Too bad cause the nerd/jock trope is definitely my favourite so I really wanted to enjoy this story more than I actually did. But beyond the formula that turned Trent into a superstar and the connection, it formed between the two leads nothing really lifted off the page. The story just stalled and went in all sorts of places that didn’t quite lead anywhere and then there was the steam at the end and it was over. I don’t know I expected a less is more approach and this short story had a lot of good things going for it that would’ve benefited from more page time and development. If it would’ve just stuck to the Jock first time and nerd crush without all the extras this might’ve been a sweet noncommittal read instead it felt like it was trying to be more but couldn’t.

Lastly, the cover for the three books is exactly the same. I almost posted my review on the wrong book. I was def annoyed to have to go back and hunt down part one. I’ve seen people use the same covers and change the tone/colour palette so readers can tell them apart but this is literally the exact same cover. And, as far as I can tell the covers themselves don’t say one two or three. The only thing that changed is at the bottom which is the title and I had to really pay attention to notice this because the bottom is only a quarter of the book and my eyes were naturally drawn to the bulk of the book. I actually went back to make sure I was right before finishing this paragraph. Unrelated to the review but it was def not obvious or stand out enough for me being used to reading series with obviously different covers. Also, the lettering is big and massive and should’ve been obvious but when you’re quick glancing at these things and looking at small thumbnails it’s easy to miss. Cause looking back at it it should’ve been obvious but the entire cover being identical literally forced me to hunt to see if they were different especially with the subtitles being the same colour. No one will care obviously but I was more than stressed when I almost hit the wrong book for this review. But that’s probably due to me having pretty heightened anxiety issues.

Newest update after going to upload the review again. On GoodReads it’s number three in what seems to be a different series but it’s number 1 in a three-part series on amazon. So, again I thought I had the wrong book and started hunting only to find out it actually was the correct book this time. I dunno. A lot about this is confusing and would probably take some time to weed through and figure out which is more free time than I have at the moment.