Reviewed by Tidal
TITLE: I’m The Guy You Hate
AUTHOR: Isa K.
PUBLISHER: Wilde City Press
LENGTH: 227 pages
BLURB:
Thirty-eight year old Jonny Ordell is hopelessly in love with his friend Mark Dorsett. There’s just one small problem: Mark Dorsett is insane.
Not a charming, cute, surprisingly insightful kind of insane. The kind of mental illness that rips apart Jonny’s insides and turns otherwise good people into villains. It isn’t Mark’s fault. It’s not like he asked to be sick. At the same time Mark’s erratic behavior and his refusal to get help is destroying everything in his path, including Jonny.
Now Jonny must decide: does he stand by his man and hope loyalty and love are enough to make Mark realize the error of his ways? Or does he abandon Mark to his illness and save himself? Neither choice offers much hope of happiness. As their affair continues Jonny must confront the possibility that his love is not healing Mark, it may actually be making him worse.
REVIEW:
I love reviewing books particularly those with flawed and fragmented inhabitants. I love angst, and gritty character study pieces that send many running and shrieking in terror. I like to know what makes people tick. “I am the Guy You Hate,” offers much opportunity to do this. It is raw,
In addition to his other work Jonny writes a column “Dear Fairy Gaymother.” Jonny dispenses great advice with insight and compassion. Often time’s people who give the best advice fail to make use of it. Jonny is in love with his friend Mark Dorsett. Mark is unpredictable and we see him treat Jonny badly without seeming provocation. As in life often the people we feel the most free to hurt are those we love the most because we know that they will not throw us away. Mark does this often and this confuses Jonny even more because he cannot find a lucid way to connect the dots.
Both Jonny and Mark are strong personalities. I lose patience with Jonny because as he is sucked into Mark’s world he spirals as well and loses himself and seems to become pathologically obsessed. Jonny is really self-absorbed and this relationship is toxic for him. I want to stop him and arm him with books on recovery, get him to a 12-step program, and throw him an intervention. On the surface to many Jonny may seem like a self-indulgent drama queen motivated by love, but there is more to him than that. Jonny quickly loses clarity of where he ends and Mark begins. Healing is a slow process that is never pretty and certainly does not go in a straight line.
Mark is a likable character and is consistent when we learn his condition and at times quite vulnerable. Being a longtime self-help book junkie, I get him. My heart breaks for him. Jonny sometime leaves me bewildered as if I am reading the diary of a teenager who just singlehandedly invented human suffering. There is a dance of disease that goes on when you love someone with mental illness and that is what makes this book is important. Jonny is faced with the decision to break the cycle in hopes they both can become healthy. I like how the book ends. The subject matter is very important and rarely talked about but may be uncomfortable for some people. I believe this book may help people to realize that they are not alone and find courage to consider options available to them.
RATING: 
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