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Pretty Dudes: The Novel

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Based on the award-winning digital series-meet the 'cosmetic genetics': friends, lovers, and situational enemies who form a vibrant, unexpected harmony of comedy, romance, and drama.

Hector "Zario" del Rosario is excited to begin life as an openly gay man in Los Angeles, but he can't keep his straight housemates out of his love life. After an intense breakup, his college friend Alexander organizes a high-stakes bet to find new romantic prospects for Zario.

Ellington Gomez has his hands full, usually with an assortment of beautiful women, but when he receives an SOS from his gay younger brother Marshall, it becomes clear that a little change might be the best thing for them both.

Jericho "Jay" Kim doesn't like staying in the same place long enough for the smell to stick, so when he moves in with struggling actor Sunji Spencer, he figures eight months, twelve tops. Only when Zario moves in does Jay manage to find an increasing amount of reasons to stay.

Pretty The Novel  brings Zario and his friends into a rich, textured new medium, combining their kaleidoscopic experiences into bold, ever-changing patterns of humor, heartbreak, and hope.

380 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 7, 2020

3 people are currently reading
223 people want to read

About the author

C.S.R. Calloway

26 books17 followers
Chance Sion-Raize Calloway is a prolific writer across a multitude of mediums and genres. Best known as creator and showrunner of the award-winning series Pretty Dudes, Calloway currently lives in Los Angeles with his Venus flytraps Betsy, Bootsie, and Itsy-Bitsy.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Profile Image for Pam.
994 reviews36 followers
September 1, 2020
The question you must ask yourself before reading this book: How important is a definitive HFN to your reading enjoyment? It's pretty important to me, so I had to sit on this rating for a minute, but in the end I didn't knock any stars off because I liked it so much before the open-ended conclusion.

It's a fun, easy read that still has actual depth. It's smart. It has insightful things to say -- about diversity and POC rep, about the unintended microaggressions the gay MC experiences from his extremely loving, caring close-knit group of straight roommates/friends, about the dangers of tokenization (with both race and sexuality) -- without ever getting heavy or angsty. 

There's also a lot of casual dating (mostly low-steam), and it takes quite a while before the main love interest really becomes clear. So you have to be able to enjoy the ride and not worry too much about the destination.

The book starts with the friend group dragging the MC out of the house for his first night out since a bad breakup. There is discussion of the bad romantic choices/luck of the group at large that eventually devolves into an elaborate bet over who can pick the best date for Zario. Shenanigans ensue, and we then get to watch how these dates play out each week.

To use references from the book, it's a diverse, Millenial, slightly more serious version of Friends / Living Single, if there had been a gay MC (or any queer rep atall...). So we get snippets of the love lives of all characters in the friends group, not just the MC, although it's a single POV...for the most part.

The writing style had me a little worried at first, but it settles into itself once the bet gets going. This is the novelization of a web series (written by the series creator), and the change in mediums is obvious when we're in scenes that don't involve the POV character. It mostly works, but the transitions are a little awkward and sometimes the jumps between the shorter scenes feel choppy. 

I'm pretty sure this is self-published, and the author is clearly a fantastic storyteller. I did end up taking off half a star for the clash of mediums, but this is potential five-star material with a proper book editor. (And I am stingy as hell with my stars.) I liked the large cast of characters, but a few of their scenes could easily have been cut as we ramped up toward the conclusion with the MC and his love interest.

That and the final ending were the two places that felt like the author needed to make better use of the inherent advantage of books over TV shows -- no need to factor in the actors themselves. Shove everybody else to the background as your MC takes center stage for his HFN, and firm that up without worrying about which cast members are committed to season two. Embrace your literary FREEEEEDOMMMMM!!!

As it is, the ending walks right up to the line of qualifying as a tentative HFN, but doesn't quite cross it. Mostly because I never could get a sense of what's going on in the love interest's head, so it really just feels like a disaster waiting to happen. But hell, that could very well be the intent because it sure is an enticing disaster, and I'm not sure I'd be able to avoid it any better than Zario is. The physical chemistry between the two characters is sizzling and their intellectual connection is palpable. It's the emotions that remain a mystery.

And despite the lack of clarity in that ending, I would still whole-heartedly recommend this OwnVoices romcom, where the platonic friendships get just as much weight as the romantic ones, and the pretty boy millennials had me laughing even as I was cringing as they somehow managed to be both ridiculous and thought-provoking.

**This book was provided for free by the author in exchange for an honest review via the MMRG Don’t Buy My Love Program**
Profile Image for Shweta.
228 reviews11 followers
September 8, 2020
A wonderful story that celebrates the true spirit of friendship, love and what it means to be human.
Going in, I have to say that this novel is written with a show script in mind and is based on the lives of 5 guys of different ethnic backgrounds and personas, living together in LA and their neighbor friend-Eagle, who is total badass with all her military swag. It kinda seems like a modern day retelling of Friends, but in my opinion, I feel like it's so much more different in more than one aspect.

The gang christen themselves the 'pretty dudes' and consider their messy love lives to be doomed with what they call the pretty dude curse. Told entirely from the POV of Zario/Zee in the form of present/past accounts, the story traces how Zee met each character, how the group became a close gang and how the friends help Zee move on from a bad breakup and find someone who deserves his worth. The last part being put into motion as a high stakes bet between the other 5 dudes.

Though it takes a bit of time to get used to 6 leads and the transitions, trust me on this, you'll come to fall in love with each of them- be it Sunji's 'I need to tweak my nipples' obsession, Ellingtons 'community dick but will fight till the end for a bro' personality, Alexander's nerd banter, Eagle's badassery, Zario's list of 'synonyms for the word dick' and the different shades of Jay's strength, friendship and love.
|"Some friendships are ridiculously romantic and tender while others can be fiercely passionate and I have both in this house. I try to imagine finding someone who’s going to defend my honor, nourish and nurse me, provide support, listen to my stories, check on me, and literally fight for me like each of these four will and do, even without request. I marvel at how they love me because they want to."|

The novel highlights issues of ethnic/racial discrimination, homophobia in a very powerful and enlightening way. I also loved how the author talked about platonic intimacy and the bond that true friends share. Very well written.
|"I think as marginalized men, we have a duty to step up for those who are even more marginalized than us. And if you’re passing the mic, you’re responsible for who you do and do not pass it to.”|

This novel would make you laugh out loud at some parts, have you reflecting back on the friendships and relationships of the past as well as make you pause and think.
If the blurb has you intrigued, I seriously urge you to give this one a try.

ARC received in exchange for a honest review via the MMRG DBML program
Profile Image for Michael.
Author 2 books4 followers
August 30, 2020
Disclaimer: A copy of the book was provided electronically for free by the author in exchange for an honest review via the MMRG Don’t Buy My Love Program.

Pretty Dudes: The Novel, by C.S.R. Calloway, is a remarkable book adapted from a screenplay from the Pretty Dudes video series. Customarily, screenplays for movies and video series are tailored from the pages of novels, but the author has performed a much more uncommon feat by 'reverse-engineering' the process. Despite the challenges inherent to writing in such a direction, Calloway has done it so well that he makes it seem as though the book might have been written first. His mechanics are flawless, and that's quite an achievement.

At first blush, one might think that the story will be about a bunch of pretty, narcissistic young men. That aspect is in there, but the narrative goes far beyond initial appearances. Just as you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, you shouldn't judge these guys by the title. At various points in the story, the main characters will surprise you with their care and consideration for each other and their giving, even sacrificial actions. Like any other shared house full of testosterone-infused young men, there are bound to be disagreements and conflicts which put their friendships and group mentality to the test, but this makeshift fraternity just may have enough depth of character to keep together.

The story centers around photographer Zario, a gay Angeleno in a deep depression over the breakup with an abusive ex. When Zario moves into a vacant room in a North Hollywood house, he joins his old college friend Alexander and two other strangers in cohabitation. One of the strangers, a Japanese-American actor named Sunji, has already met Zario, who'd been gawking at Sunji's lines in the gym and at his built, Black friend Ellington. Lucky for Zario, the two straight men are gay-friendly and unoffended. Coincidentally, it's Ellington's old vacant room into which Zario moves, and the four, plus a stocky Korean who's known as Jay, form a fabulous fivesome whose fortune in aesthetic genetics is outdone only by their drinking games and close personal camaraderie. Their neighbor, a married woman going by Eagle, joins the group as an auxiliary friend but an essential and honorary 'dude' nonetheless.

Alexander organizes a contest to help Zario back into the swing of life and male dating. The four straight men each have gay acquaintances (this is L.A., after all) who become their own candidates for Zario to meet, and they each hope that Zario will pick their personal selection to win a lucrative bet. The book details the ins and outs of these dates, all within the context of the bond among the house members, and it features lots of surprises along the way. Eagle plays a key role in balancing out the guys, and Ellington's gay brother Marshall, barely collegiate age, is an 'out' and friendly ally to the reserved Zario. Will Zario withstand the gauntlet of these guys' tough love, including that of the exasperating Jay? Which, if any, date will Zario end up choosing?

The message contained in the story is more than the dates and the other shenanigans perpetrated by the housemates. Calloway directs the readers to ponder their own attitudes toward happiness, faith, goals in life, and sexuality. He reminds us that we are all works in progress and beautiful in our own ways, broken parts included. The Dudes may be pretty, but they're far from flawless, and they are discovering their own paths in life concurrently with Zario. The prettiest parts of them may not even be their physical attributes but their love and care for each other.

Calloway's writing style may take some getting used to, mostly because there are so many guys in a group setting, but it works for this type of story. He never loses the attribution assignments, either stated or implied by context, while the dialogue spools out fast and furious. Once the reader adjusts to the pace and the order within the cacophony, the story holds together and it becomes more intriguing with every chapter. A salient feature of a good storyteller is the ability to engender empathy for the characters in the minds of the readers, and Calloway does that with aplomb. The point of view is first-person present tense (narrated by Zario), which keeps the action hopping and adds a freshness and verve uncommon to novels and hard to pull off. Calloway, genius that he is, manages to win with this approach. To augment the dazzle, he sprinkles the narrative with vocabulary words which impress even the most seasoned lexicographer and the most cunning linguist.

Enjoy the humor in this book as well, because there's plenty of it, both overt and in the form of jokes which are inside enough to make the reader feel privileged upon 'getting' them. Foreshadowing and irony abound, and these literary devices should be assimilated by even the more casual or skimming reader. But, I wouldn't limit myself to skimming along the surface of this one, for you'd miss a lot of juicy detail. One might, especially in the first part of the novel, be tempted to dismiss the dialogue as unrealistic and the events as implausible. "Nobody talks like that...Nobody does those kinds of things," I can hear critics bemoan. Well, guess what? The novel, even though framed as contemporary, realistic fiction, doesn't suffer from such treatment. On the contrary, it embellishes the story and makes it entertaining like we've rarely seen. Pretty Dudes is not supposed to come off as a documentary; it's fiction. It only has to be as lifelike as a surrealist painting. It doesn't have to be a literal depiction or portrayal. At various times it strays into the realm of caricature, of exaggeration, of hyperbole, but, like that surrealist painting, it gives the appreciators of such art the themes and ideas communicated by the creator and reinforced by such emphasis. Calloway has created a literary Picasso here.

By all means, order and read this novel! Moreover, subscribe to the channels which feature the Pretty Dudes books and video series, because these guys really grow on you! In reading and watching, you might find yourself looking at others, and yourself, in a whole new, deeper way.
Profile Image for Amber.
1,294 reviews33 followers
August 11, 2020
3.5 rounded up. When I got to the end of this I wasn't sure what to think of the book. I wasn't thrilled with the ending of this book but it for the most part I did enjoy reading it. There is a lot of humor and I love alot of the characters. I like the group dynamic of all friends and the interconnecting relationships between them. They are caring of each other but at times the relationships get messy as well. Four straight guys and the next door neighbor trying to set up their gay friend is a fun concept.
2 reviews
November 13, 2020
What I needed

I enjoyed the book as well as the show, if you haven’t watched the show do yourself a favor and watch. This booked really helped me distract myself from all the bs going on in the world.
Profile Image for C.S.R. Calloway.
Author 26 books17 followers
February 5, 2024
Hi, I wrote this! Pretty Dudes: The Novel is based on the award-winning digital series and has all the great stuff from the show, plus new and exciting scenes, storylines, and moments.

💘 straight guys playing matchmaker for their gay homie
☕️ a unique chosen family
💵 a bet that puts everyone out of their comfort zones
🦄 thoughtful conversations about marginalization and intersectionality
💍 an accidental proposal
🏨 rooftop LA clubs with pools
🦚 a pretty privilege deconstruction
💪🏾 one protective older brother
🃏 a life-changing game of truth or dare
🐇 something called hoikey-boikeys
💦 hot, sacred, explicit gay sex
🏳️‍🌈 straight love, too, sometimes, but really a lot of gay shit

content warnings:
🗯 implied sexual assault
🥃 frequent/excessive alcohol use
💊 brief drug use
💔 brief suicidal ideation

Zario, Ellington, Jay, Alexander, Sunji, and Eagle are all waiting for you inside. Grab an empty teacup and let them pour you a shot of escape.
Profile Image for Aza Gise.
1 review
July 27, 2020
I couldn't put it down! It's a great read. I don't wanna give spoilers but you definitely won't regret buying this book.
Profile Image for kitt.
15 reviews
July 20, 2020
tell me why I had forgot about the daughter of eve!!!! if ever I die from anything absurd, it'll be from laughing at that scene at an inappropriate time (which I always am), or from thinking about how mortifyingly similar I am to one zario del rosario
11 reviews
September 4, 2023
This book is a JOYRIDE, and I personally view it as the author's Magnum Opus. For those not familiar with the context, my understanding is more or less the following - this book was written as a novelization of an online TV show during the pandemic in order to bring in revenues while filming of the next season was not possible. Ironically, and no shade meant here, but I feel like the book did a much better job than the TV show of expressing the author's VISION. Although the TV show is great in its own right and fantastic for LGBT representation, its delivery is marred by budget production quality (no shade meant!) Personally, I think there's a lot of irony in the fact that this last-resort re-invention of the TV show ends up being it's saving grace, because with nothing but words as the medium, the production quality shackles that fettered the TV show are not here to limit the author's original artistic vision - and boy, does the vision SOAR without those shackles. Scenes that I did not understand during the TV show became heart-wrenching, intense, thriller moments that captured the passion and desperation of the gay experience in modern-day America. A very ethnically diverse cast of characters does a much better job of accurately and completely capturing the diversity of the LGBT community than what we usually get. I don't want to get into spoilers, but the story follows the main character, Zario, through a progression of events that are as much fantasy as they are fear; love and loss, romance and friendship, and a lust for life whose fiery passion is undermined by trauma that is so universal to the gay experience.

11/10.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews

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