Reviewed by Stephen K.
TITLE: Heteroflexible
SERIES: Spruce Texas #3
AUTHOR: Daryl Banner
NARRATOR: Chris Chambers and Kirt Graves
PUBLISHER: Tantor Audio
LENGTH: 11 hours and 26 minutes
RELEASE DATE: February 11th 2020
BLURB:
Jimmy Strong is one devastating son of a gun.
He’s gorgeous, stubborn, a dancer, fiercely protective of his loved ones (to a fault), and intense. He can steal your heart with his infectious laughter…and break it with a single glance of his stunning, rich brown eyes.
I ought to know. He breaks mine every day.
Being his gay best friend and college roomie is, to say the least, frustrating. Especially when you’ve seen just about every inch of that corn-fed beauty, he’s worked his way into every fantasy you can remember having, and he’s as straight as they make them.
We’re heading back to Spruce for the summer. He just broke things off with his latest lady-squeeze, which means I have Jimmy all to myself for three long months of relaxation, bro-time, and kicking back.
Until one night alone with Jimmy – and a reckless, unthinkable move – that changes everything.
REVIEW:
Daryl Banner continues his tale of small town life, particularly that of a somewhat idealized small Texas town, Spruce. This time his hetero-flexible character is Jimmy Strong, younger brother of the first book’s football star, (now football coach) Tanner Strong. Jimmy was the “straight boy” in book one who asked his openly gay best friend Bobby to the prom when he was dumped. Though we didn’t hear all the details in book one, this book goes into more detail and we see that the “promposal” was as much to cause a stir and change the story as it was to make a statement.
Jimmy is a bit of an attention addict and that’s generally fine with Bobby Parker, his openly gay best friend. Jimmy’s need for attention is apparently genetic. His family is one of the wealthiest families in the small town and his mother, owner of two businesses in town likes to make sure that “the Strongs” are always in the spotlight. Bobby Parker’s family is clearly lower middle class and Bobby, while head over heels in love with his “best friend,” likes to avoid public attention.
This is one of the most convincing examples of the gay-for you trope that I’ve ever encountered. While Bobby is openly gay, Jimmy is clearly a “Bobbysexual” He’s slept with women and might just be able to see himself with another guy, but his real feelings are for Bobby, no matter what plumbing he has.
Tanner and Billy from book 1 make appearances here as does Trey Arnold from book 2. We also see the mother of the Strong clan, Nadine here again as well.
This is the third book in the Spruce Texas series. Chris Chambers once again narrates, this time with Kirt Graves. Chris primarily voices the attention seeking Jimmy, while Kirt primarily voices the more modest Bobby. Both guys do a good job with voicing both characters and the pacing and narrative storytelling are professionally done.
It did feel a bit odd this time to have Chris who’d been the introspective one in the previous two books be the “oblivious one” this time around. But that’s really just an artifact from listening to the other books. Kirt does a great job with his bits, and is a great choice to be the primary one voicing Bobby.
All that said, this isn’t the best of the series. I feel that the author let us down a bit with the book’s main crisis, a feud between the guys that starts when brash Jimmy gets Bobby fired from his summer job as a movie theater usher. Bobby’s reaction seemed totally out of proportion given the temporary nature of the menial, unappealing job. It might have been better if the blue collar nature of Bobby’s family had been stressed more. But I really think the easiest solution would have been to write an even less confident Bobby. Have the real crisis be something other than the loss of an unimportant summer job.
I also had a bit of a problem with this book’s parts about Jimmy Strong being a dancer. I’ve got no problem with male dancers. In fact I know several quite well, and for a time was seriously involved with one. The details about dance that are presented here (and Jimmy’s persona overall) just didn’t ring true based on what I’ve learned about dance and male dancers (regardless of their sexual preferences).
That said, I did enjoy the book overall. This is basically a low angst, “dessert” type of book; not terribly full of real content but sweet and satisfying. As with book two, this one doesn’t quite give me that “Let’s read it again now” feeling that my five star reads generally do. However, it did lay the groundwork for future books in the series and I’m not yet done with the boys of Spruce.
RATING: 
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