Reviewed by Dennis

TITLE: A New Man

AUTHOR: P.D. Singer

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner

LENGTH: 276 pages

BLURB:

Senior year of college is for studying, partying, and having fun before getting serious about life. Instead, Chad’s days are filled with headaches and exhaustion, and his fencing skills are getting worse with practice, not better. Then there’s his nonexistent love life, full of girls he’s shunted to the friend zone. Is he asexual? Gay?

Grad student Warren Douglas could be out clubbing, but his roommate is better company, even without kisses. He’s torn up watching Chad suffer, gobbling ibuprofen and coming home early on Friday nights. If Chad weren’t straight, Warren would keep him up past midnight. They’re great as friends. Benefits might answer Chad’s questions.

A brief encounter with lab rats reveals Chad’s illness—he needs surgery, STAT, and can’t rely on his dysfunctional parents for medical decisions. Warren’s both trustworthy and likely to get overruled—unless they’re married. “You can throw me back later,” Warren says, and he may throw himself back after his husband turns out moody and hard to get along with, no matter how much fun his new sex drive is. Surgery turns Chad into a new man, all right…

…but Warren fell in love with the old one.

REVIEW:

Warren is a starving grad student not only having to deal with the stress of his professor, Dr. Homer Schofield, but also having to deal with his attraction to his straight roommate, Chad. Ever since Chad became Warren’s roommate his party life ended and he became a crushing homebody, with dreams of love running through his head.

Chad is in his senior year of college with a scholarship in fencing. Not only is he having to deal with his fencing master, Daniel Orlov, but also he has to deal with his fencing rival and bully Andre. Chad grew up swimming and was very good at it but once he starting getting chubby around the midsection he changed sports, found the fencing uniform would cover his belly and excelled at the sport, until headaches and constant exhaustion plagued him. Dating is a whole other story with Chad, always feeling uncomfortable with his looks; he would friend zone himself with the girls he dated before it could go any further, causing him to second guess his sexuality. So to help with this he enlisted Warren to collect a little sexual research data, and of course Warren was too happy to help.

Choosing a book from P.D. Singer to review, I got excited because I have read other books from her and fell in love with them. With “A New Man” I didn’t fall in love. I’m not saying that I didn’t like or enjoy it, I just didn’t fall in love with it. There were a few things that would take me out of their world and bring me back to reality. What pulled me out of the book was a few times when the story went from one scene to another without a clean transfer, leaving me having to go back to reread the last sentence to make sure I was reading right. The other thing was sometimes the characters would go off on a tangent with their inner thoughts that would leave me confused as to what they were talking about.

Now with that said, Warren, Chad and the others characters were well thought out and the story was enjoyable for the most part. You felt the turmoil Chad is going through and were happy that he had Warren to be there for him and with him through it all. Warren loves Chad, belly and all and makes sure to let Chad know that he is beautiful just the way he is.

Without giving too many spoilers, Chad has to have a surgery, and post-surgery his appearance as well as his personality goes through changes that should have happened when he was much younger during puberty. He becomes an obnoxious teenager and pushes the limits as any teenager would do. He pushes Warren to his limits of putting up with his bullshit, to the point of comparing Chad to his asshole father. Without giving too much away Chad makes a big mistake and Warren is fed up with Chad’s actions and tired of all his excuses and gives Chad his walking papers. Does Chad go along with Warren or is what they have worth fighting for and working out? If you want to find out if they can work through the tough times and make their relationship work, you’ll have to read the book.

RATING:

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