Tale of Two Summers is a gay novel, by Brian Sloan, written in a manner of blog entries by two best friends who are separated by the summer. Hal, the gay teenager, is stuck in his hometown. He is supposed to live through the boring summer, sitting for his driving test. His best friend, the straight boy, Chuck, is away for a drama camp.
Both blog down the events that happen that summer - Hal meets a fag hag, Brett and a French young guy, Henri, who returns his affection. Chuck has crushes over Ghaliyah, but ends up spending more boy-girl moments with MK.
I want to say badly that I was head over heel in love with this gay book, which talks about the friendship between a gay boy and a straight boy, as well as the mini love story of a gay boy. I should also say I love it because I like coming of age gay stories. But I can't. I spent around $60 on this book, based on my country's currency, and I felt a little wasted here.
I think Brian Sloan has a good story plot here. But I am not one who is able to digest much of the blog entries. I can't understand how a story is told through blogs, ignoring perhaps other details which are so important, untranslated by blogs.
There are several gay books I am unable to complete. I seriously thought Tale would be another, but I forced myself to continue to read. When I have to force myself to read, this is so uncool. I keep skipping paragraphs and pages, when Hal is blogging uninteresting stories about him and Brett, or when Chuck talks about MK.
I am not convinced that as a straight boy, Chuck spends so much time blogging. For someone who wants to lose it, he is way too attached to his gay friend, instead of out there trying to score with the girls. And the length of the blog is unconvincing at times. Way too much for kids to go this distance to be labeled cool.
I was interested much when Chuck talks about the possibility of Hal being interested in him... judged by the kiss. Unfortunately, that was shot down eventually. Thank goodness there was French Henri to keep my interest on the book alive. But it went down too, when Henri acted stupid at the end. Still, the few chapters before the crash were good enough to burn the pages. I mean, hot stuff.
When Brian hinted that there could be a book 2, I told myself ENOUGH. I won't touch a book two of such story-telling. And the funny part is that I actually bought A Real Nice Prom Mess even before I had started to read Tale of Two Summers. I pray that I would like Prom Mess much better than Tale.
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