Doubts, by Peter Styles

[Ulysses]

Doubts (Drop Dead, book 2)
By Peter Styles
Four stars

This goofy, angst-ridden sequel to Peter Style’s first “Drop Dead” book continues the story of Geo Durand and his long-distance boyfriend Lex Fletcher. These two twenty-somethings have a successful podcast called “Creep Corner,” which focuses on celebrated true crime stories. They also have day jobs that seem appropriate for millennials: Geo working as tech support for a coffee-machine company, while Lex creates digitally-based art on his tablet for book covers and for private commissions. Geo lives with his twin brother, Mark, and they share a close, bickering relationship.

The basic narrative involves two story lines. Lex seems to be pulling away for some unexplained reason, and Geo grows increasingly disturbed at his boyfriend’s escalating silence. His job life is rendered more awkward because Mark’s ex-girlfriend Katie, with whom both twins have been friends since middle school, also works with him. That’s also the secondary plotline: Mark’s unexplained break-up with Katie and his unwillingness to talk about it with Geo.

I enjoyed this book. It suffers from the problem of many sequels—the success of the story in the first one has to be maintained with a new stand-alone narrative, and it’s not always easy to achieve the immediacy of the original. At times Geo’s struggle over both Lex and Mark’s not trusting him seems a little forced, but the author’s clever prose and banter among the characters kept me smiling throughout. The intertwined plots also reflect a very distinctive 21st-century reality for young people that is wonderfully alien to my generation’s perspective.

Styles isn’t just cranking out his plot; he charms with his characters’ clever words. Geo looks suspiciously at a run-down coffee shop and its occupants, “…the other half wore slouchy beanies that reflected their posture as they huddled over their iPads like burning fires in a cold winter.” Later on, Geo and Mark explain part of their rationale for selling off unwanted things given to them by their manipulative, controlling mother: “By selling this, we’re giving her the one gift we know she wants most of all: disappointment.”

Such wry observations keep the writing fresh, and remind me that this is a new world I’m reading about. My only consistent gripe is the misuse of “I” when “me” would be correct. This just suggests to me that the editor is as young as the author, and has never quite learned this basic bit of grammar. Drives us old folks crazy. But I am not one to knock off stars for editorial issues.

I am both intrigued and concerned, going forward, about Geo’s relationship with his gay father, who sounds truly obnoxious. Part of me is glad that we see a kind of gay man who is not admirable, while another part of me cringes at the thought of gay people living down to the worst stereotypes. Truth is, daddy Durand sounds a little too familiar, and for that reason l want to know more. All in all, “Doubts” is a romance about gay millennials, and as such it offers a fresh perspective on love in our time, spiced with a smart sense of humor. I can’t wait to read the third book in the trilogy in which Geo and Lex deal with Geo’s father: “Decisions.”