First Time
bud smith (editor)
This novel is a collection of essays, stories and poems about the first time the authors had sex. I only bought this ‘novel’ because one of my favourite authors had written a piece for it. Sadly, it didn’t turn out anything like I hoped, not to mention the humping bunnies on the front cover
By the feel of things, I think the authors had a wide scope of what they could write. For me, I hate poetry. I especially hate random poetry where I can’t work out any of what is going on. Other examples were of not-true stories. What is the point of writing expository fiction if your reader can’t connect in any way with it?
It’s stupid of me, but for some reason I thought this would be a collection of stories about queer people’s first times. I figured this because two of the authors that I knew had works in this book were gay, and I liked their other pieces. So as such, this ‘novel’ wasn’t for me. I’m not interested in the first times of straight people, generally these seem to be boring. Queer people (and I know I am generalising here) have more interesting first times, or first meetings, because half the time they don’t know what they want or if their partner will be willing, available and accepting.
Honestly, I read about half this book, picking and skipping authors that I wasn’t interested in. There is no way I would have read it in its entirety. I will be freeing it into the wild in the hopes that other people might get something out of it. If you’re queer, I’d recommend the Letter Q instead for relatable fiction. Let’s give this one 2-3 stars and call it a day.
At times, I felt exactly as David did about his son. Ben couldn’t be dead. It was painfully clear that David’s self-deception as a character came through as an unreliable narrator. This was such powerful writing, and I could feel all of the characters leaping out of their pages like real people.
Romance. Romance, romance, romance. I forget that I generally don’t enjoy the ‘smoking’ sex scenes or powerful erections. I appreciated the differences between James and Joaquin’s love-making styles, but I wasn’t left asking for more. I read other great romances (Deep Blue) lately, and they just have an individual spark that makes them great. This novel attempted to keep me interested in Mexico, specifically Acapulco, but it just didn’t happen.
Oh man, oh man. Where do I get started with this? The jazz and soul music promised to me by the author, or the attractive cover? Or both? I found myself hooked in, with the music and lyrics speaking to me and tying in nicely with the delicious cover. I didn’t feel ashamed of taking it out in public, and in fact read it instead of doing house renovations!
This is the sequel to Just One Night. But I didn’t know that when I picked it up to read it (or otherwise I probably wouldn’t have started it at all). It reads perfectly well as a stand-alone, which is good enough for me with the waiting-line of other novels I want to read!
Ellis is a tortured soul who is only trumped by Vada’s nightmares. Vada is the protagonist, and we see everything from her perspective. What wasn’t obvious to me was why Ellis pulled away after the accident. The blurb is misleading for sure. Just ignore the comments there, and jump into the novel.
There’s too much reliance on obvious differences between Heidi and Harper to get some good characterisation happening. I couldn’t have cared less which one wore the pants or the skirt (and isn’t that cover awful? There wasn’t a pink tutu to be seen, thank goodness). Or which one is epic with guys, and the other is completely oblivious.
