JB Black, $2.99, ISBN 978-1005999445
Contemporary Romance, 2019
Wait, the Chinese guy tops in this one? Let me take off my glasses and wipe them a bit. Let’s use some alcohol wipes for good measure and reread that scene. Oh my goodness, the Asian guy is the one that gives it to the white bloke. Oh my goodness, I feel like I’ve stumbled upon a real life unicorn. Do you how rare that is, to find an Asian character portrayed as a desirable, sexual figure in a romance novel?
Oh wait, let me amend that. Richard Lee Chang still falls into the lovelorn trope, as his greatest desire is to go all the way with his roommate Neil Bianchi. Oh, the stereotypes fly. Richard likes fashion, blushes, simpers, emo movies, and K-pop. Wait, K-pop? Oh, I get it, because he’s Asian, right? Neil is a jock, likes and plays football, et cetera.
Anyway, Richard gets Nick to play a skit based off William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and they end up kissing. The next thing I know, Neil only hesitates for a moment before happily taking fake and real pee-pees up his chocolate tunnel as if boys had been running trains in and out that tunnel for at least 10 years. Seriously, can guys take things up that, you know, thing that easily? I know that in fiction a man’s rear end poopy chute is as bouncy and flexible as a jumbo trampoline with Tammy Slaton bouncing up and down on it, but come on.
So, basically, The Play Is the Thing is a story where characterization, plot, build-up, and pay-off are all boiled down to a simple sentence: penis incoming, time to spread those cheeks. Neil is straight? Doesn’t matter, took one in, because sexuality is just a cover that hides the hunger for peen beneath. Why does Richard want Neil? Neil is hot. Okay, that one makes sense, but then the author tries to sell me that this is as much love as it is lust and I can only roll up my eyes. The characters are paper-thin, both men talk like they are the same person that learned how humans speak from watching CW shows, and the whole plot begins and ends with penis entering poopychute.
Like Joe Biden will say, The Play Is the Thing is, you know, the thing. The thing that things. What thing? Who cares, it’s just a tepid rush to a sex scene that bears little resemblance to anything remotely real, with not much else to savor.
