Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Poster Boy

SERIES:  Theta Alpha Gamma #5

AUTHOR:  Anne Tenino

PUBLISHER:  Riptide Publishing

LENGTH:  375 pages

BLURB:  

It’s all fun and games until someone puts his heart out.

After being outed to his hockey team and then changing schools, Jock figures he’s due for something good—like the sex he missed out on in the closet. Toby, the hot grad student he meets at a frat party, seems like a great place to start, and their night together is an awesome introduction to the fine art of hooking up.

Toby’s heart takes a bruising after the near-perfect experience with Jock leads to . . . nothing. He’s been left on the outside as his friends pair up into blissful coupledom, and he’s in danger of never completing (or starting) his thesis. Can’t something go right?

Then Toby’s coerced into chaperoning a Theta Alpha Gamma trip to France. Not that he’s complaining. What better place to finish his thesis and get over that frat boy? Except Jock’s outing is leaked to the press, turning him into an unwilling gay rights martyr, and he decides France would be a great escape, too. It’s a break from reality for both guys, but they soon find their connection is as real as it gets.

REVIEW:  

“Seriously, you have to keep an eye on these guys. The potential for asshattery among them is exponential.  You can’t imagine.”

Well…if that doesn’t sum up the boys from Theta Alpha Gamma, I don’t know what does.

Toby is not a TAG.  He’s a history grad student, trying to finish his master’s thesis.  Well, if your definition of trying involves pointedly not thinking about/writing it and generally ignoring all approaching deadlines.  And there is nothing better to fuel procrastination than falling smitten with the virginal ex-hockey jock, Jock.  Too bad the smit seems to be one sided, and after a stellar fuck, Jock flees from Toby, and apparently into the pants of any man who is willing to offer up their ass.  Toby shouldn’t be depressed that a one-night-stand left him so alone and wanting.  Shouldn’t want another chance with Jock.  Shouldn’t want what all his friends have gotten, but what he can’t seem to find.  After all, what is love when you have an advisor breathing down the back of your neck, and a tepid desire to finish your master’s.  You know, that resident-advisor position in France is starting to look rather good.  Even if it comes with a bunch of fratbros.

Jock may have only been a TAG brother a short time, but that doesn’t make him any less family to the crazy fratbros.  So when he is outed, publicly and irrevocably, they do what they do best: circle the (beer) wagons and offer him an escape route from the insanity that his life has taken and into a trip to Provence, France, for the semester, to study at the university’s satellite campus.  While he is a little leery of having to spend a semester, in a foreign country, with some of the craziest of TAG’s crazies, 16 weeks free from having to dodge reporters sounds like heaven.  And maybe surrounded by all that French-ness he might get the balls to make (another) move on Toby.  This time without the 3am fuck and dash.

Neither of them planned on just how insane the boys of Theta Alpha Gamma could be.  Or what havoc they could unleash on poor unsuspecting France.

Lord help and save me from Theta Alpha Gamma, for they are sure to be the death of me.  If one can die from laughing that is.  I honestly don’t know how Toby was able to spend so many weeks in close proximity to these guys, and not end up with a constant headache from banging his head against a desk, a wall…or Jock’s rock-hard abs.  They are all like little children who have access to all the alcohol and sweets they could ever wish for.  And while I am opposed to giving alcohol to children (and, truthfully, opposed to children, in general), these guys just made me love this story.  It was just so much fun reading about their antics.  Some of my favorite parts of Sweet Young Thang were when these guys tried to unleash their sensitively-trained asses on the unsuspecting public, and this book was all that fun/insanity times a hundred.  There were some points where I had to set my laptop aside and just bury my head in my pillow and just let the laughs work themselves out of me.  I’m pretty sure my grandparents think I have finally lost (what is left of) it…what with the cackling at 2am.

The whole thing with Jock’s coming out was really nice (for us, if not him).  It wasn’t just one gesture or one action, but a series of decisions that, while sometimes probably poorly made, led to him being able to come to grips with who he is.  I liked how everything wasn’t quite as simple as I thought it was when the whole situation with the photo was introduced in SYT.  And I totally got Jock’s reaction to all those people trying to make him become something he couldn’t see himself as, especially given the context of what led to that whole photo debacle.  Being a poster boy for the pro gay-athlete fight isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

“I don’t want to be the pioneer!” Jock exploded, his jaw unclenching violently, getting in his brother’s face. “The first gay guy who plays? He’ll be a fucking token, Tank. Nothing will matter except that he’s gay—not talent or leadership or personality or anything. He’ll just be the first faggot to go pro!…I want to fuck whoever I want to fuck, and no one has the right to tell me I can’t do it, and I want people to think it’s normal. I’m not a cause, I’m a good player who happens to like dick!”

Wanting to be more than a poster boy, more than a figurehead, is not all that unrealistic a desire.  But I really loved that Jock started to see that his poster-boy status gave him something real to do, and real people to touch and change.  And it also showed Toby a way to live his life that wasn’t just for his family, and his mother’s, expectations.

Honestly I just loved the love story here.  It was angsty and sweet, and full of enough complications that I never quite knew if Jock was going to pull his head out of his fine posterior or if Toby was going to get over his whole ‘vacation-shirt’ idiocy.  Jock’s whole “I don’t wanna be the girl” issue was handled really well.  Even if it took him a ridiculously long time to come to the conclusion he was being a douchbag.  A douchebag is a douchebag is a douchebag…and you, my dear Jock, were being a Grade-A douche.  But he was enough of a grownup to realize it, at least.  The slow build up, the angst, the will-they, for the love of all that is French and tongue involved, just-kiss-already! was perfect for this story.  And it was balanced rather nicely against the fratbro antics.

The one complaint I have with this book is that it took about three chapters for me to figure out what they hell was happening.  Or, more like, when it was happening.  This story starts about halfway thru the events of Sweet Young Thang, at the party where Sebastian apologizes to Collin, and it took me a ridiculously long time to place it.  In fact I had to put this book down and go back and reread SYT (not that that was a hardship, since I love that book).  Most of this book does not deal with the events of SYT (with the exception of the anti-beer-terrorists shenanigans) and was an easy read by about chapter four, but that beginning just threw me a bit, even after having just read SYT.  There was a lot going on in those first few chapters and I just had to push thru it.  It was worth it though.

This has to be my favorite book of the series (though it is a very close competition).  I just really loved this story.  And not just because Jock was an ex-hockey player (giving me a perfect excuse to brag that my Sharks just whooped the Kings again in game two with a tremendous 7-2 win), and not just because I love reading books that are set overseas (even if I kept having flashbacks of the nightmare that was my French language classes in uni).  These boys of TAG kept me laughing, and Jock and Toby kept me hot under the collar.  These complication-laden, angst filled, love stories are my favorite–especially when they are surrounded by hilarious insanity.  Jock and Toby are totally imperfect, but totally perfect for each other.  This book was everything I wanted it to be–even if Danny threw me for a lovely loop with his inane fall into love.

But, after all, it wouldn’t have been a trip to TAG if someone didn’t fall madly and completely in love.

RATING:  

BUY LINKS: Riptide publishing Amazon Are