cass's Reviews > Another Way

What I liked: Will. I loved how his personality blossomed as we got closer to him, I felt like his character really opened up naturally. I loooove a story with a Dom who is also just a person, with flaws and feelings and limits and can hold a conversation like a normal fucking person. Love love LOVED that he was unafraid to be vulnerable and open and loving. It’s honestly rare that you get vulnerable male characters in MM at all, let alone a Dom who isn’t a stone-cold billionaire who “learns to love” (not that i don’t also enjoy that story).

I liked the unusual structure of the plot development. Not only the thing where the main character is cheating on his girlfriend, but also that we meet our characters after they’d been fucking for 8 months already. It was fun to see how much relationship development there was still to explore.

What I didn’t understand: Jesse. Despite living in his head, or maybe because of that, I really didn’t understand Jesse’s motivations or likes or dislikes or drives or really anything that makes him tick. He kept saying or doing things that I didn’t see coming and didn’t know how to fit to the character that I’d built in my head… which made me realize that I really just didn’t know Jesse well at all. He carried on a BDSM relationship for like, 5 years with two different people behind his girlfriend’s back and we never really got his explanation or motivation for that, nor did he ever really deal with the consequences of that decision. He never expressed guilt, or defensiveness, or tried to justify his behavior, or explain this behavior to himself or other people… nor did we get the sense that he was particularly cut off or detached from himself in a way that would allow for the kind of extreme compartmentalization that would have to occur for someone to live a double life deliberately for THAT long. We also never got the sense that he was a particularly self-absorbed person, despite the fact that he went home with WELTS ON HIS ASS and just, expected his girlfriend wouldn’t notice?? Somehow??? Like, he’s clearly very self-absorbed but it never comes up and it doesn’t become something he has to deal with. He never has to deal with any kind of internal growth, really, despite the whole plot being that he finally breaks apart the double-life he’s lead for half a decade to live and love openly … yeah, there’s some growth that has to happen there, folks.

What I really disliked: the casual homophobia that seemed to be coming from the author. Just small little things that really ticked me off. Oh and the biphobia that goes completely unexamined and unaddressed. I’m all for characters struggling with their sexuality, I get it, that shit’s hard… but what the fuck is Jesse’s problem with being bi?? Why don’t we hear Jesse think or talk about any of his hangups with his sexuality? Why doesn’t Will ever challenge Jesse’s frankly shitty views that he expresses about whether he’s gay or straight (or GOD FORBID bisexual)? We get the impression early on that Jesse is past his queer identity crisis (since he’d been fucking Will for 8 months at this point…. yeah) (altho I should have knows when he said he was “pansexual heteroflexible”… heteroflexible? Really? How many different ways do you have to say “bisexual” without saying bisexual…) but then he’s all like, “I’m not gay! I can’t be gay! I love women!!! Will’s just DIFFERENT doesn’t make me GAY” shut the fuck up Jesse. No one challenges him on this. We never see him struggle with this internally. We never understand WHY he's struggling with his identity. We never get a moment of "it's okay, you can take your time to understand yourself but please think about why you hate the idea of being gay so much because that kind of hurts my feelings". (or maybe it's just me. it kind of hurt MY feelings.) The author let him get away with this bullshit for the whole book and I hated it.
Jesse “teases” Will for living in a gay neighborhood, and there’s a flavor of “we’re not THOSE gays” to some of their interactions with their straight friends… of which Will seems to have a lot… in fact, Will had no gay friends at all… ???
Oh yeah and they get hate crimed the literal first time they go out in public to a gay bar. Of course. (No wonder Will has no gay friends… gay people can’t go outside without being heckled! How could I forget!) And Jesse tried to beat them up?? (Another wtf is this character moment) And then Will is all like “lol I can tell you’re new at being gay” as if gay people get hate crimed at gay bars so much we’re all just, jaded and immune to the indignity of it? And have no time for compassion for someone experiencing homophobia for the first time? (Obvs violent homophobia is real and a daily concern for many, and everyone deals with it differently… and also, we’re not all getting garbage thrown at us every time we leave the house, contrary to what straight people might think… particularly in a gay neighborhood in Seattle…. and also also, we’re not all jaded about being yelled at by homophobes, that shit is fucking terrifying no matter how many times it happens…)
And overall I just felt like the author was really straight. Uncomfortably so.

I think this would have been 4 stars but unexamined homophobia really grinds my gears. What can I say, I’m a generous reviewer.