Reviewed by Jenna

TITLE:     Wrong Room, Right Guy

AUTHOR:     Liam Livings

PUBLISHER:     Manifold Press

LENGTH:     190 Pages

BLURB:

Simon’s the wrong man in the wrong place; trying to teach English to kids who couldn’t care less, he’d really rather be a writer – but it’s only when his best friend bullies him into it that he takes the plunge and joins his local creative writing group. Even then things don’t quite work out the way he planned; blundering into the wrong room at the Village Hall he encounters a group of recovering cocaine addicts and he wants to know more … which is the start, for Simon, of a double life and a whole new secret identity, not to mention an intriguing relationship …

REVIEW:

The story begins with a glimpse of Simon’s discontent with his teaching job. He is passionate about English, but no matter what he does, he cannot seem to inspire his students. Since he has wanted to write for so long, Simon decides to join a writers group. However, on the first visit Simon accidently walks into a room which is hosting a cocaine addiction recovery group and sees a guy that he’s interested in. Simon later has the idea of going to the meetings and pretending to be a recovering addict. Though his motivation for this is to get story ideas, he also wants to know if the hot guy, Darren, is gay. Simon suspects this is the case and seeks out a relationship with him even though he realizes his deception is likely to land him in hot water.

Though this book took a little while to take off, I was happy with the story when it did. Simon’s deception created tension in the story and I was constantly wondering when everything would fall apart. Though I liked the happy ending, I was not at all fond of the main character. It is really hard to read a book in first person point of view when you don’t like the person speaking to you.

I found Simon disagreeable due to his insensitivity. I didn’t like that he chose to pretend to be an addict and lie to people who were trying to heal from their addictions just to get a story idea. Later when his deception is revealed, it seems as if he thought nothing of it. He didn’t appear to care too much about Darren’s feelings and I was waiting for him to beg for forgiveness. I was just disgusted by how he handled things and how he didn’t seem to regret his unfortunate choices.

Simon’s female friends were also not very likable to me since they seemed to condone his behavior instead of trying to steer him in the right direction. Simon redeems himself to a certain degree in the end, but not enough to make me forget his attitude for most of the book. Despite disliking Simon, I liked Darren well enough to keep me interested in what would happen to him. Overall, the reading experience was enjoyable.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

Manifold Press 

Amazon 

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