Just A Dumb Surfer Dude, by Chase Connor

[Ulysses]

Just a Dumb Surfer Dude
By Chase Connor
Published by Lion Fish Press, 2019
Five stars

This neither a long nor complex book, but it filled me with delight from beginning to end. It’s a classic teenage gay romance, but with an interesting twist and filled with laughter.

I especially loved the central characters, Cooper Weissman and his best friend Alex Johnson. Together they form a little “tribe” who understand each other better than anyone else in their school. The only possible exception is Mr. Weissman (whose first name we never learn), Cooper’s widowed father and a teacher at Cooper’s all-boy prep school, the Dextrus Academy in Vermont. This father/son relationship is one of the warmest I’ve ever read in a YA/LGBT novel, and was enormously gratifying.

The surfer dude of the title is a transplant from San Diego by the name of Logan Marshall. Stereotypically beautiful in his SoCal way, Logan is instantly on Alex and Cooper’s radar—another rich jock, who the boys quickly realize is more than he seems.

You can’t much talk about this book without spoiling it, so I won’t. Just say that Chase Connor knows how to make characters both real and appealing. At first I was shocked by the salty language that parents and children use with each other—until I realized that this is the way I talk to my kids. Generational differences, for sure.

I loved this book so much that I bought the second book while I was still in bed, having just finished this. These are all people I want to get to know better.