A week or so ago, I received the best gift in the mail a book...

A week or so ago, I received the best gift in the mail a book blogger can want: personalised book swag! This combined with the eARC I’ve been reading through since then was pretty stellar.

Jerkbait is told through the first person point of view of a younger twin who plays hockey largely because of pressure from their parents. What he would really rather be doing is taking part in the school musical and acting in theatre. 

Sadly, when his brother attempts to commit suicide not multiple times, Tristan’s plans get put on hold. Rather than potentially endangering Robbie’s college career, the twins get put under a kind of increasing house arrest that sees Tristan looking out for Robbie and trying to make sure he doesn’t try anything again. 

This book had everything. Gay main characters, bullying, heart wrenching moments, amazing misleads, character growth… Every time I thought a plot point might be disappointing or boring, I was completely shown otherwise. Jerkbait plays with tropes regarding musical theatre, sports and high school boys, it also shows multiple different kinds of antagonists, and ultimately shows that friendship and family are more important when everything else gets stripped away. 

This book deals with a lot of heavy content and could have run the risk of getting bogged down, becoming dogmatic or ending up too good to be true. I don’t think it ended up doing any of these things.

The only things I wasn’t sure of were the overuse of the word ‘jerkbait’ (although this could be my own lack of acquaintance with it before now) and the slightly supernatural content that kind of hovered around this story and only really came out to the fore at the end. But, really, those are such small nags and don’t at all take away from enjoyment of the whole.