My Side of the Story by Will Davis
When the Buzz editor asked me to review this book, he warned me that it contained controversial material. The book is about a 16 year old gay guy searching for love and understanding from his family and friends. I assured the editor that I would not be shocked, this was a growing genre within young adult fiction.
There have been many books on the theme of homosexual love published for young adults over the past 15 years. One of the first that I read was Peter by Kate Walker, published in 1992. And most recently I was asked to review another book on the same theme for the Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge.
In summary, Jarold is 16, gay and working very hard to keep it secret. The only person who knows is his best friend Al (short for Alice). But then his parents find out and the trouble begins. For some reason they don’t understand why he insists on going out to a gay nightclub and getting drunk regularly instead of sitting at home studying. So Jaz in grounded, and grumbles about it to Al on the bus to school the next day. Al has no sense of subtlety, and by the time they get to school, everyone on the bus knows that Jaz is gay.
From there the story becomes fairly standard about bullying, violence and social banishment. His parents decide that with counselling he will change. A teacher frequenting the same gay bar as Jaz takes him under his wing. Al’s parents refuse to allow her contact with Jaz. And in the middle of it all Jaz meets the man of his dreams.
I thoroughly disliked this book. By page 7 I was over the work like. It surely appears at least once in every sentence. This may have been a feeble attempt to capture a realistic youthful voice, but it quickly became distracting. If you add in the f#!* and the c%&@ words you have a book almost entirely written with 4 letter words. Boring…
And the plot was just too sentimental and trite. The book nearly went into the bin when Jaz’s gay teacher and his therapist find true love together. The cover includes a quote about how funny it is ‘I had to stop reading in public’. Sorry, but I found no humour at all, just a sense of foreboding inevitablility.
Anyone would have to be out of their minds to waste $30 on this rubbish. Most YA novels are about $20 – $22 each, so the price of this one is outrageous for a typical paperback. I have my hardcover Harry Potter 7 ordered for the same price.
