Release has me torn. It is a book of two halves. One, a wonderful coming of age, gay love story, two a supernatural, magical realism, ghost story. For people who have read The Rest Of Us Just Live Here by Ness the format will be familiar: alternating chapters telling two stories. In TROUJLH it works because Ness is pointing out the mundane side stories that happen alongside the fantastical tales we usually get. In Release, however, the two tales don’t really match and gel together.
Adams story is excellently and sympathetically executed, taking us through the day in his life where he gets release from the break-up that broke his heart and the conflict within his family.
The ghost story, the magical faun and his fae queen though, I don’t really know what the deal was there other than it also ended with a kind of release.
Had this just been a novella with Adams story I might have rated this a wee bit higher (that deserves a 4), but it isn’t. It isn’t a long book by any means, but the extra pages taken up by the random magical realism detracts a star for me.