Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.5 stars.
This was a bit of an odd read for me - I definitely enjoyed it, but I had such a complex system of negative and positive points running through my head that the overall rating was more of an emotional decision than a mathematical one.
Matt, our main character, meets his current boyfriend, Brian, about a year before the story starts. Brian is really, really, ridiculously good-looking - but there's more to life than that. Which is great, because Brian is an enormous dickbag. Matt goes to Syria as an administrative consultant to Doctors Without Borders, where he is then kidnapped by terrorists in a case of mistaken identity (like you do). He is inadvertently rescued by a Navy SEAL team and after a rough start, bonds with them over superficial matters like personal integrity and honor. Matt agrees to a bananas plan to play bait set for him by a mysterious man named Randall and his status as a brother-in-arms is secured.
This was a bit of an odd read for me - I definitely enjoyed it, but I had such a complex system of negative and positive points running through my head that the overall rating was more of an emotional decision than a mathematical one.
Matt, our main character, meets his current boyfriend, Brian, about a year before the story starts. Brian is really, really, ridiculously good-looking - but there's more to life than that. Which is great, because Brian is an enormous dickbag. Matt goes to Syria as an administrative consultant to Doctors Without Borders, where he is then kidnapped by terrorists in a case of mistaken identity (like you do). He is inadvertently rescued by a Navy SEAL team and after a rough start, bonds with them over superficial matters like personal integrity and honor. Matt agrees to a bananas plan to play bait set for him by a mysterious man named Randall and his status as a brother-in-arms is secured.
+1 point for Brian's continuous gaslighting. It's not a great character trait to have in a significant other, but it gave him more depth than just being a giant dickbag (though he was, for serious).Overall, this book was less about the burgeoning romance between Matt and a member of the SEAL team than it was about the brotherhood that is created during constant life-or-death situations, the type of trust that military teams rely on to survive in combat situations. The monologuing is hokey, as is appropriate, but I am always a sucker for a good nakama storyline.
-1 point for the ridiculous paragraph-long descriptions of Matt, Brian, Matt's friends, the SEAL team platoon and anyone else who stood still long enough for it to happen. I don't need to know the exact height, weight and number of eyelashes these men had; it was like reading bad fanfiction.
+100 points for Petey, the horrifically offensive, yet weirdly endearing long-lost Weasley brother whose highlights include lines like: "Christ, Cornhole! You're harder to hold onto than a greased up Japanese prostitute!"
-a billion points for Matt not fucking knowing what a Navy SEAL is. This is a 29 year old man who, ostensibly, grew up in a middle-class American family. I refuse to believe that this is esoteric knowledge. I refuse. Especially when he assumes Randall is CIA and wonderingly thinks of him as a spook - why would you know what a spook is, but not an elite branch of the US military? I call shenanigans.
+3 points for the literal dick-waving contest on an amphibious assault ship.
-69 points for NO SEX?? Look, I did not pick up a book about toothsome military men for a constant fade-to-black, okay?
+10 points for "fluorescent orange crab-trap you call your bush."
-half the accumulated points for the constant casual misogyny that pervades both the military and the gay community. Realistic? Absolutely. Likable? Not one damn bit.