Invisible life by E Lynn Harris

Rating: WARTY!

Read very averagely by Mirron Willis, this was another audiobook fail and it was arguably a book about, in part, homophobia, written by a gay man, which was itself rather homophbic!

Written in the early nineties, this is a story of Raymond Tyler, who can't seem to make up his mind. Ray is a confirmed hetero until he's not. He's not exactly raped, but he is pushed into a sexual relationship with the appropriately named Kelvin (since he's so hot, get it?) who is a rather formidable-looking athlete, and then he willingly continues it, but very quietly. He's really a jerk because he's dating a woman named Sela at the time and he doesn't have the decency to break-up with her or tell her he's having sex with someone else. This is an incontrovertibly dick move, especially since he's now putting his partner at risk of picking up an STD. What bothered me is how easily they fell into bed without a second thought for possible consequences.

That said, I DNF'd this because it was boring, especially since Ray does exactly the same thing again, but to his new girlfriend, Nicole. There was this huge jump in time that came right out of left field, and then he magically meets this guy again, which is when Nicole is kicked into the back seat. What is wrong with this guy? I know there really are people like this, but I don't care to read about people being jerks especially when the story is boring, predictable, badly-written and appears to be going nowhere interesting. I can't recommend this.

Any Way The Wind Blows by E Lynn Harris

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audio book from the library, and it was read amateurishly by Dominic Hoffman, Bahni Turpin, and Mirron Willis.

Singer Yancey Harrington Braxton, aka Yancey B is in LA, her New York wedding to John "Basil" Henderson having been killed off at the last minute. Her first single "Any Way the Wind Blows" contains secrets about Basil, and Bart Dunbar might know what they are.

That's the sad plot of this absurd and pathetic effort at drama. First person PoV is the worst voice choice for most stories, and it's made much worse when its multiplied by three. It's worst still when it's read by people who don't even remotely capture the characters they're reading for, and instead make them irritating to listen to instead of interesting.

Yancey was one of the most boring and self-centered characters I've ever encountered. It was a actually a pleasure when someone else took over the narrative, but he was worse than Yancey. After listening to one disk of this audio book I had had more than enough. It was awful and I cannot recommend it. Twenty years ago, bisexuality might have been a big secret, but today you need more than that to be your novel's pivot point. Add unsafe sex proudly championed, and these characters are really nothing more than trash and not even recyclable trash.