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A review by endemictoearth
Final Boy at Randy's by Loren Leigh
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
This felt very fanficcy, but in a good way: the feelings, the EMOTIONS, the yearnings, the LONGINGS, the confusion and intoxication of lightning bolt love right after the strike. God, it's making MY prose practically purple. Overall, I did really love this, but I think there were a few tricks that could have be employed to rack the focus a bit (appropriate cinematic reference) and made the squiffy bits around the edges seem more . . . purposefully squiffy?
The beating heart of this book is the two beating hearts of our MCs. I think we maybe are supposed to think that there is something a little otherworldly and predestined about their meeting. Lennox is the sole makeup artist on his brother's guerilla horror film shoot in an abandoned and soon to be demolished grand hotel. Reed is a water polo player who tags along to the shoot with the girl he's been very casually seeing, one of the film's stars, and roommate to Lennox and his brother. We start out with a bit of a mess, and it only gets untidier from there.
Lennox gets this weird dejavu around Reed; he's physically similar to the boy he fell in love with in high school who outed him as trans. As it turns out, Reed plays water polo with the very same asshole. Not as much is made of that as might have been, and it did lend and edge of tension to the reading experience, waiting to see how that will be revealed. It's not dealt with until quite late in the game, but there is a very satisfying scene near the end.
The other squiffy story line is about this eerie/ethereal graffiti and art (and later journals) they find around the hotel's lower level. I do think there were some ways to handwave the fact that this was not well developed or explored by having one or both of the MCs say something about how they might have been more interested in the mystery of the art and messages if they hadn't been so single-mindedly obsessed with each other.
I highlighted a lot of swoony thoughts and speeches, and generally just love the intense emotions Leigh conveys in the writing, so I'm willing to shrug my way past some of the missed opportunities with subplots to luxuriate in the capital R Romance.
The beating heart of this book is the two beating hearts of our MCs. I think we maybe are supposed to think that there is something a little otherworldly and predestined about their meeting. Lennox is the sole makeup artist on his brother's guerilla horror film shoot in an abandoned and soon to be demolished grand hotel. Reed is a water polo player who tags along to the shoot with the girl he's been very casually seeing, one of the film's stars, and roommate to Lennox and his brother. We start out with a bit of a mess, and it only gets untidier from there.
Lennox gets this weird dejavu around Reed; he's physically similar to the boy he fell in love with in high school who outed him as trans. As it turns out, Reed plays water polo with the very same asshole. Not as much is made of that as might have been, and it did lend and edge of tension to the reading experience, waiting to see how that will be revealed. It's not dealt with until quite late in the game, but there is a very satisfying scene near the end.
The other squiffy story line is about this eerie/ethereal graffiti and art (and later journals) they find around the hotel's lower level. I do think there were some ways to handwave the fact that this was not well developed or explored by having one or both of the MCs say something about how they might have been more interested in the mystery of the art and messages if they hadn't been so single-mindedly obsessed with each other.
I highlighted a lot of swoony thoughts and speeches, and generally just love the intense emotions Leigh conveys in the writing, so I'm willing to shrug my way past some of the missed opportunities with subplots to luxuriate in the capital R Romance.