Customer Reviews

My Worst Date

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I found this book incredibly boring. While it is obvious that Leddick gets into his characters, I did not. I found them two-dimensional, hollow cliches lacking in authenticity. Mr. Leddick should do more research and try to imbue his characters with more dimensions and distinct voices. I would suggest that he write porn instead, but even the sex scenes in the book are unrewarding, unerotic and unarousing. On the plus side, the guy on the cover is quite tasty and fortunately legal. Someone should just put together a coffee table book of covers of gay novels. I am sure that it would be more stimulating than a great deal of the novels themselves.

An enjoyable read looking in on the life of an intelligent sixteen year old boy, Hugo, who discovers his sexuality while living in the South Beach area of Miami. There are some very bizarre developments in the story, yet, none are morbid or impossible. Actually, while reading as comical, much of the book calls upon the reader to think through their personal points of view on various issues.

Some good examination of the range of sexual orientation (goood examples of degrees of hetero and homosexuality concept.) Hugo and his friends are delightful. His mother is a wonderful role model of a single parent who is mom and dad to her son without hindering his freedom or being nosy or invasive. The most ambitiously sexual character in the story is one that I could love or hate -- at least I found myself running from one of those directions to the other throughout my reading.

A fast, worthy and endearing read. Leddick should be commended for his character development. There's a range of everyone and everything on earth threaded in this story and the author makes each memorable. Go for it!

P.S. The cover has nothing to do with the book.

I'm shocked by some of the praise reflected above and below for this extremely disappointing novel.

The characters are wholly unbelievable, the plot strains for credibility from page 1, and‹worst of all-the dialogue is hopelessly dated. Teens use language that no '90s teen would ever use. "Humpy?" That sounds like mid-'70s gay queen (it's okay for me to say that, I'm gay!).

This is a real downer of a book, all the way around.

Reading this book was a difficult experience. Being gay I have expereicned the huge amount of narcisism that is prevelant in the gay community. This book is the embodiment of that and even pushes the envelope even further.

The story to me is entirely unbelievable. A man that is having sex with his mother's boyfriend? A boy that strips at 17? That get's picked up by a relative at the club? Please...

One chapter began with a sequence I had to read twice. It involved ctiricism of people that are fat -- "fatties" -- Ugh. It is literature like this that gives people the reason to think that gay people really are like this.

Avoid this book -- unless you are interested in soft erotica.

I found the characters sympathetic, the plot seemingly implausable (in reality, having worked in the bar/sex industry, I know that it is very possible), and the writing in need of a strong editor. I was hooked from the start and greatly enjoyed it.

Perhaps there are 16-year-olds in Miami Beach who are as knowing and wise as Hugo (and his best male and female friends). It is pleasant to think so and to admire Hugo's management of family and future, despite playing with fire in the love and sex department. When does he have time to read Muriel Spark, Jean Rhys, and M. F. K. Fisher? Or to know of such 40s film stars as Betty Grable, Ray Milland, and Miriam Hopkins (but not Robert Taylor? )? (Hhis friends who are also supposed to be born around 1970 allude to Donna Reed and Dorothy Lamour!)
The wrong (far older) universe of cultural allusions strains credulity, but the voice (Hugo's) is delightful, and the plot may be improbable but is not impossible.

This book came out in 1996, way ahead of its time. Mainstream literature readers weren't ready for an in-depth look at the gay scene in Miami Beach, where everyone is self-centered, body-obsessed, monogamy is unheard of, and bisexual men are creeps to the men and women around them. This was when having one token gay character on a TV show was titillating. Now we see these types of men all over the place in shows like Queer As Folk and mainstream America is begininning to get a glimpse of gay culture.

This book stands the test of time. It is still relevant a decade later and doesn't seem dated at all. The main plot centers on a 17-year old son and his mother dating the same man, the dashing Glenn Eliott Paul. Mom is unaware that her son Hugo is secretly getting it on with her boyfriend. Some reviewers claim this is unrealistic. Wake up! Men on the "down low" are a cultural phenomenon and this is happening in every town in America (okay, maybe not in the same family, but there are many men who sleep with men but live life as heterosexuals).

This is a dramatic tale, full of twists and turns and deceptions and family secrets. No, you don't have to "like" all the characters. But, boy, does this make for some thrilling reading! There is plenty of homosexual erotica in this book, which I found to be well-done.

Give this book a chance and view it with an open mind. It is a complete page turner, and you get to see the action from the points of view of two very well developed characters, Hugo and his former-model Mom Iris.

I came to Amazon to buy a copy of this book for a gift, and read some AWFUL reviews about it, and yet to MY view, there's no question that this is ABSOLUTELY the best book ever written about South Beach. OK, our main character Hugo is a bit "wise" for a 16-year-old, and his references, allusions, etc., are over the head of most kids his age today (or in '93 when this was written), but for quality of tone, an on-the-mark conceit about South Beach and characters that ring true for South Beach, no book written before or after this one comes close to capturing what the environment (and the people) are really like down here. And who says you have to "like the characters" to have a "good book"? Any of these reviewers ever read a guy named Shakespeare? I'll stick with Hugo.

A few days ago I was walking in a bookshop in Amsterdam when I was taking a quick glance at the shelves with gay fiction. Looking for a book by one of my favorite authors.

(un)fortunately I didn't happen to see his latest book, so I kept on looking some more and then I saw a book with one of the most intrigueing titles I have seen in quite some time. The rest is history... After reading a few lines from the book I decided that I ought to buy it. Only one day later I finished the book.

One of the things I really liked about the book was the different insights, ideas and opinions because of the different points of view. It is not a book only told by its narrator, Hugo, because when that would be the case I think the book wouldn't have been quiet as interesting as it were now.

It's easy to feel sympathy for the main characters, even though they can be a bit annoying at times, especially when they think they are old enough to talk like grown-up people.

Overall I really enjoyed the book and I am looking forward to finding something more by this author in the bookshelves. Only hoping that he won't be a superfacial one day fly.

In this book, our hero, a young and handsome boy named Hugo, seems to sort of flow from one situation to another. His mother is a former model, now a realestate agent who has given him handsomeness which he uses to begin dancing in a strip club, getting a part on a local TV show and to attract the attentions of a former gay pron star who starts dating his mother at the same time. A later twist comes when a sleasy porn director wants to use him in his films later turns out to be his long lost fater in desperate need of money. The book never really seemed to alight anywhere for too long and I never really developed an affinity for any of the characters. I thought it odd that nobody seemed to ever tell anybody anything. For instance, the boy loves his mother, yet when he finds out she is dating the same man he is, who he also just found out was a porn acter in the 70's he doesn't suggest that it might be a good idea for her to get an AIDS test. Not a horrible book but not one I would read again.