After I finished an entertaining sci-fi read, it took me a while to find a book I actually wanted to read next, and this turned out to be it. Several I had on my unread list were first person so I decided to save myself some grief and I skipped those. A couple of others I started reading and found that they simply didn't appeal, so I skipped those. When I started this, it seemed like it might be the exception, but in short order, I became convinced it had been a mistake to even start reading this, it was so full of trope and so amateurishly written.
I mean, we're told that the main charcter, is “a guy who did a carpentry apprenticeship” but we're also told that he's been on the ice since he was three with a lifelong crdream to play professional ice hockey, so when and where in hell did he end up doing a carpentry apprenticeship? Akso, what's with the title? Buzz? It plays zero part in the story - at least in the part I could stand to read.
This was about this gay guy, Cameron Riley, who wants to be an ice hockey professional - which is a bit of a cliché I admit - but it turned out he had some sort of problem which the doctors are trying to figure out, so he can't play for a while (and that's the end of ice hockey in this story BTW), Cameron travels to stay with his older brother, who is also gay of course because gods forbid there should be any straight guys or cis women in a LGBTQIA story! Naturally, his sabbatical is where he meets Noah Clark, the love of his life, so there's some telegraphing going on here and once in a while, the author appears to forget she wrote something, so she repeats it or contradicts it a few screens later.
For example, at one point early in the story when Cameron is hospitalized after fainting on the ice, his brother Jackson messages him saying "On my way, should be there tonight." Shortly after this, when Jackson shows up, I read, "The mix of expressions on Cameron's face made Jackson smile: confusion, then surprise and joy." So did Cameron not recall reading the message announcing his brothers intended arrival? Or did the author simply forget she'd written that earlier part?
In another example, early in the novel, Cameron's boyfriend, Nathan, a complete asshole and not in a good way, texts Cameron to dump him saying he's had enough of his drama and he's moving out. The extreme cruelty of this message makes a reader wonder what the hell shit Cameron has been pulling to piss off a guy like that, so it's not a good idea to have your character become free in such a manner. This cliché was no surprise though, since in stories like these, you evidently have to have the wounded gay guy looking for love (yawn). In fact that's the worst time to get into another relationship, but not long after that point, I read of Cameron wondering to himself about Nathan, "Would they become ugly roommates now?" How are they remotely to be roommates of any hue, if Nathan is summarily moving out? Again, the author quite evidently forgot what she'd written.
The misleading book blurb - typically written by some dipshit who never read the book and has no real clue about it (or anything else for that matter, hence my series of Non-Reviews that I post periodically!) - claims that Cameron is the bad boy, but there's nothing to support this in the story at all. In short, and as usual, the blurb lies. I was so relieved this wasn't first person PoV because it would have been a real nightmare. As it was switching unnecessarily between three perspectives when the main character's PoV was more than sufficient was just dumb writing and made for an unpleasant read.
I finally quit reading when three houses came onto the market and all three brohers each liked a different one, and decided there and then to jump up and buy them so they could all hang out together like a frigging bunch of bananas. Barf. I know this is intended as a series, but WTF? I honestly could not stand to read another sentence in this jackass story.
