Reviewed by Stephen K.
TITLE: Not Like Other Boys
AUTHOR: K.A. Merikan
NARRATOR: Tyler Kent
PUBLISHER: Acerbi & Villani Ltd.
LENGTH: 9 hrs and 5 mins
RELEASE DATE: November 19, 2020
BLURB:
Lose an eye. Win a boyfriend.
Ethan. Taxidermist. Goth weirdo. Can’t wait to be done with high school.
Ethan is a young artist-entrepreneur with a love for quirky taxidermy. Roadkill is so much better than people. By the end of high school, all he wants is to develop his business, yet all his parents want is for him to go to law school. That is more than enough of a problem for Ethan, so any kind of love life is out of the question. That is until Robert Hunter, the quarterback of the football team, comes crashing into him. Literally.
Robert. Quarterback. In the closet. More than meets the eye.
Robert is the popular kid, the quarterback on his way to med school. He’s gay, but not exactly coming out since he doesn’t like to stir the pot. One night, spurred on by too much booze, he ends up causing irreversible harm to Ethan, the school’s weirdo.
The aftermath.
Robert will do anything to avoid charges for what he’s done, but when Ethan makes an indecent demand in return for his silence, Robert might just be in way over his head.
For Ethan, it’s a simple act of revenge on a bully, but when Robert turns out to be not-so-straight, their arrangement gets complicated all too fast.
REVIEW:
I first encountered this work under it’s former title “Diary of a Teenage Taxidermist” back in 2014 when I borrowed it from a friend via Kindle loan. Stumbling upon it again, under it’s new title, I was intrigued, yet again, by the blurb and arranged to borrow it via another kindle loan, from yet another friend. Only when it arrived did I make the connection that it was the same book, and I passed on “using up” yet another friend’s one-and-done Kindle loanability. Imagine my surprise when I found an audio-version among the books available for review on LoveBytes.
I honestly didn’t recall many of the plot details from my reading of this over six years ago, so in some ways, revisiting this work is a bit like reading it for the first time.
As an inveterate logophile I tend to stop and look up words that I’m not familiar with. Though I probably looked it up six years ago, the author’s use of “celedon” to describe the clearness of a pretty boy’s eyes, pulled me out of the story, yet again. Celedon has always been tied in my mind to the milky light green pottery. Probably NOT the most brilliant word choice.
But that was quickly made up for with the line “Robert’s gonna help me out with something I missed at school.” I’d never heard of a blow-job described quite like that before.
One of the book’s major themes, and one that I found intriguing (twice), is Ethan’s “hobby” of taxidermy. It’s is something that most people don’t approve of, and yet, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong, damaging, or dangerous about it. I wonder if public reaction might not be the prime reason for the change of title. There is an odd, somewhat off-putting, yet fascinating quality about taxidermy that this story picks up on. Several other reviewers that I respect seem to dismiss this tale out of hand after encountering this.
The first time I read this, as a gay man I was attracted to the metaphor about not blindly accepting societal norms, and there’s also a parallel here with the morality surrounding the sex for silence bargain that Ethan drives with Robert while still in his hospital bed. One might ask “In this #MeToo era, is dub-con sex, or even fantasizing about sex under modest duress, ever permissible?”
The whole scene where Ethan exhibits his elk based “sculpture” resonates in the way Robert is fascinated like he might be by the sight of a traffic accident – something he’s drawn to examining closer, while feeling somehow guilty for being interested at all. He’s equally challenged and intrigued by the thought, the effort, and the level of detail that Ethan has put into his “artwork.”
Beyond the whole taxidermy and the dubious sexual consent issues, this is the story of two teen boys exploring gay sex, and of forming a relationship while in the closet.
At one point Ethan refers to himself as a black weasel and briefly considers Rob as a white weasel. But, to this outside viewer, a more representative “spirit animal” might have been the hedgehog. Both boys are more than a bit prickly trying to form a secret friendship while maintaining their outward identities.
The one act of dub-con sex has a, “revenge of the nerds”, “bully comeuppance”, fantasy quality that many a gay boy can identify with. But Ethan quickly listens to his conscience, and the story doesn’t wallow in these aspects for long.
Ethan quickly relents and recants his sexual bargain with Robert. By chapter 4 the story evolves into two teen boys uninhibitedly (but covertly) exploring sex. Between the first times, and the repeat performances, this book had a higher graphic sex per page ratio than any of my reading — outside “one handed” friction fiction. Also, given the characters’ individual imperfections, and their prickliness, the sex scenes never get predictable, nor as mechanical & clinical, as so often happens.
Just when the story starts leveling out, Derek, a “religiously strict but gay” cheerleader invites Ethan to Prom. Rob (and the readers), have to reconsider Ethan’s and Robs relationship in light of Rob’s newly discovered jealousy.
At the end of Chapter 13, it occurred to the pragmatist in me that the authors may have missed a profitable bet. They’d wrapped up most of the initial conflict, and the story arc makes a radical change. Chapters 14 through 23 might well have been packaged as a sequel. There’s clearly enough material, (and enough hot sex), in those chapters to warrant it being a separate book.
As to the audio presentation, I’m a tiny bit ambivalent about Tyler Kent’s narration. His job with the overall pacing and the general narration is fine. His narration of some of the most intimate and descriptive sex scenes I’ve ever listened to works so well… it feels almost disloyal to criticize any of his weaker moments.
He does a superb job at characterizing the “jock-ish” Robert. But Ethan’s, “socially inept kid’ voice is a bit jarring, particularly in the early chapters. Ethan’s voice probably should be jarring. But, at least, I wasn’t continually reminded of that fact when reading the book. In my own mind, I heard a number of the boys’ exchanges quite differently – in a more sardonic, but companionable tone, conspiratorial but friendly. Actually hearing them as voiced by Tyler Kent, they seemed to lose a bit of their charm.
Perhaps that was partly due to their volume. Tyler does a number of dialogue lines at full volume that are clearly labeled otherwise. e.g. (in a gruff whisper) Overall the narration is stellar, and the discord was barely noticeable toward the end, but I did wish that a few more of the adverbs were respected early on.
Also a minor nit needs picking… many of the teen girl voices seemed not only too similar but somewhat poorly acted. There’s a angsty cadence to school-girl speak that Tyler hasn’t quite mastered.
Four Hearts but Five Bonfires
RATING: 
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