A review by kj468
Undone by Leslie McAdam

Did not finish book. Stopped at 55%.
I was so excited about the premise of this book. It's the classic "I think I'm homophobic but I'm actually jealous" reddit post, which is an excellent concept that was poorly executed here. I've read dozens of stories based off this premise and usually they hit, but this one was a flop. 

Several things struck me as problematic:
  • It's very much MM Romance Written by a Woman. I'm a strong believer that anyone can write MM romance without being fetishistic or creating idealized, fake version of gay men, but this very much is, like, the sexualized fantasy of gay men by women. If you've read a lot of MM romance, you can probably feel that distinction better than I can articulate it. When I read the author's "about" section on her website, it included the phrase "spends her nights writing about the men you fantasize about" which gave me the ick and helped solidify my feelings of discomfort about the way gay men were portrayed here.
  • The author relies heavily on stereotypes, primarily about gay men, but also about women. As if to counterbalance this, the characters go on several rants about hating stereotypes, about being "more" than just stereotypes, etc. But like, you can't just write the most stereotypical characters and then say stereotypes are bad, and pretend you didn't rely on stereotypes, ya know?
    • For example:  Jason’s sister gives as past clues for him not being straight is that he’s incredibly well groomed and keeps his house really cleaned. Jason pushes back that those things don’t make someone gay, then she continues on with more stereotypes, like that he listens to Broadway musicals and knows all the words to Moulin Rouge. They acknowledge these things don’t make him gay, but she points out that maybe these things don’t add up to being straight, so like the author is acknowledging the stereotype and then doubling down on it. 
  • It’s also weirdly misogynistic, like the female characters very blatantly only exist for the purposes of the men. At 55%, they only entered the plot to solve a problem in Jason’s life. Jason's sister handles all the realty stuff with Jason’s landlording, Jason's hookup disappears conveniently and Jason only thinks about her for sex and she only comes up when Jason needs to think about girls. The mom is MIA. Jason has a gross attitude about shopping with his sister, very “women, they take forever amiright?”. Also, I don’t think there are any notable women in Murph's life? Like I get he’s gay but wow maybe hang out with a woman too. I've read plenty of MM books that basically don't include women at all, which is a problematic in a whole different way, but I honestly think I'd prefer that to this flat, one-dimensional version of women who only exist to benefit the men in the plot.
  • I had already decided to DNF this before the third act breakup but wanted to see them get together. They finally did — and Jason immediately says he’s not ready for more than kissing, which is totally cool. Makes sense. But then in the same scene Murph says he wants to blow Jason, and Jason says he doesn’t know if he wants to keep going, so Murph appropriately says "okay  that’s a no then". Good, great reaction. But then??? When Jason says he’s not sure he wants to stop, so Murph goes right back to getting him into bed??? Like what happened to taking it slow??? If the author wanted it to be a smut scene, fine. Just don't have the characters waffle over whether or not they want it like that.
  • Wild to me to publish a queer book in 2022 and include a Harry Potter reference. Like wow, tell me you don't actually care about queer people while profiting off them without telling me. 

On a positive note, the narrators were doing a great job with the audiobook.
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