Hot Corner Press, $2.99, ISBN 978-1-937252-83-0
Contemporary Romance, 2014
Jason Cryforevermore lost his twin brother, whose death everyone blamed him for, and he seek comfort with his only best friend in the whole wide world, Hunter Ford (not a porn actor!), only to believe that Hunter had fled in disgust because he outed himself as gay. Now, he has cancer, and Hunter is here to take care of him. What can Jason do but to pause in his constant weeping and wailing to lift his rear end to that guy?
Yes, Jason, the hysterical tear-spewing waterspout, is the designated bottom in this story, because the most progressive and accepting genre in the world, if you believe the authors and fans, still believe that bottoming still somehow makes a man less masculine.
This version of Laura Harner’s Part of Me has been revised and expanded, and given that this is a short story and I haven’t read the original version, I can only wonder whether the author has added more weeping and crying here. Seriously, Jason needs therapy and Valium. I try to tell myself that he is undergoing chemotherapy, not the most pleasant experience around, to put it mildly, but I get exhausted just following this weeping willow. He sleeps hugging a photo of Hunter to himself, and endlessly works himself up over his twin’s death and his estrangement from Hunter. It’s as if he had nothing to occupy his time or distract his mind at all—it’s all endlessly crying, weeping, beating himself up, and gazing at his own navel 24/7.
When Hunter shows up, these two basically hole themselves up in their tiny bubble to continue beating themselves up and indulging in dreary psychoanalyzing of every minute detail of their past and present, complete with stilted speeches that look like they had been ripped out of a psychology textbook. Nobody talks or acts naturally here. Everyone acts in and speaks with melodramatic extremes, until I feel like Jason’s cancer has somehow spread to my brain.
Oh, and yes, Jason is still alive by the last page, if case some folks out there are wondering. I wish I can say the same for a sizable population of my brain cells.
Part of Me is what happens when the author confuses exaggerated melodrama for compelling storytelling. Everything here is just too much, too often, and it is too easy for me to just tune out as a result. The high-pitched cartoon-like tone of the story makes it impossible for me to take Jason’s circumstance seriously, and I end up only feeling great relief when I reach the last page. Although, sometimes, in the cold and terrifying darkness of night, I think I can still hear Jason’s wailing inside my head.
Also, come on, is that the kind of cover one slaps onto a story of someone with cancer?
