Almost Undead

by A L Waith

[Jane]

This book is labeled LGBT-friendly. This label ticked me off the most. This is also what damages the book before the rest of it is even consumed. In my opinion, when someone publishes an LGBT-friendly anything, it is exactly that—LGBT-friendly. Literature lacks in LGBT+ diversity, but if you’re going to contribute to it by adding similes regarding how two male characters are like a heterosexual couple the entire time, that isn’t LGBT+ diversity, it’s sabotage.

This sixteen-year-old kid named Lucas fears coming out to his parents and has a best friend who, all the while knowing Lucas is gay, constantly slings around gay insults. After Lucas meets Kiran, the author constantly compares Lucas’ feelings regarding a relationship with Kiran to life with a girl:

- The first punch was “like he would a girlfriend”, which was used to describe the way Kiran handled him. Seriously?
- “He may as well be a girl” because he was feeling weak from Kiran’s actions. Why can’t he just feel weak because that was what Kiran made him?

I’m too lazy to search through for the rest of the things; I actually wound up ranting about it to a friend who agreed with me…and found my commentary as I continued to read it quite amusing. (Eh.)

When books are written in third-person point of view, I see the author as the narrator and the third-person perspective as that of the author. If this was how the character personally felt, it should have been in first-person POV, or it should have been clearly stated that that was how Lucas felt.

Of course, that leads me to the next point: story planning. There is no story planning. The story in this book is all over the place, and it's exhausting.

I wrote a full review on my blog.