This book is hard for me to rate. While I liked the overall concept of the story and really enjoyed some of the scenes, there're still some issues that bugged me.My main problem: we never get to see any of the relationships develop, be it Sean and Jamie's (who go from being best friends to sleeping together within the course of, like, 5 pages), Sean and Tyler's (who are already an established couple once the main part of the story starts), or the eventual threesome. I think the problem here are the big time jumps within the story. While I get that they were necessary to drive the plot forward, it felt like too much of a summary while reading the story. The two pages spent on introducing us to 12-year-old Sean are, IMO, superfluous, and the big time jump just before the main part of the story starts skips too much. I also would've loved to see Sean, Tyler, and Jamie develop feelings for one another. Instead, we just get told that Sean loves Tyler, and that he's loved Jamie all along (which, okay, I can somewhat buy); but what about Tyler and Jamie? They don't even know each other all that well but are suddenly totally in love with each other? Yeah. No.I liked that the book tried to address the topic of Sean, Tyler, and Jamie making their relationship public. The reactions of their parents, however, are just too unrealistic.The writing, especially the sentence structure, was a little too repetitive for my tastes. This book has a bit of a double prologue. At 12, Sean realizes he’s in love with Jamie, who is four years older and their families are close friends. Then on the night of Jamie’s graduation from college, (Sean is 18 OF COURSE – insert eyeroll) Jamie makes a move and Sean is thrilled, only to find that the next morning Jamie left for the military without a word and they’ve not heard from him since. Now, 12 years later, Sean has finally found a great boyfriend, in fact Sean’s mother may like Tyler more than Sean and vice-versa for Tyler’s family, when out of the blue, Jamie is back and everyone is pushing Sean to befriend him again, especially Sean’s mother. After an extremely awkward family dinner (with Tyler in attendance – and his clueless mother doesn’t get why that might be awkward) Tyler and Sean actually make an effort to befriend Jamie, although Jamie doesn’t really make any bones about the fact that he’s still hooked on Sean. Before long, maybe they can all three get along.I was so annoyed with Sean’s mother and how she pushed Jamie and Sean back together, and then she couldn’t handle it when they did hook-up. I wished she was a real person and I could say “Ha, you were the one pushing them to make nice lady”. Mind your own business from now on. But I loved that Tyler’s family was fine with the trio and one of Tyler’s sisters was always sending m/m books to Sean to read and his mom was open, and even Jamie’s ex-military father was okay with it, as nearly losing Jamie in Afghanistan made him put his priorities straight. So there were lots of good points to this, seeing Jamie in essence, be the trigger to force skittish Sean to admit his feelings for Tyler was nice and I liked that while Tyler may have been more accepting than I was, he had a bit of a bitchy side he unleashed a couple of time (in addition to his slutty side he released at every possible opportunity LOL) as did Sean’s father. So when you’re in the mood for some m/m/m, it’s a good read that I enjoyed.My only niggle was at the beginning a big deal was made of the fact that Tyler didn’t do PDAs at all, and then later in the book he’s touching both guys in public (not at a gay club which is different) but just out in the park, or whatnot. Not explanation was given for his change of behaviour, but minor detail.
What do You think about What We Deserve (2011)?
More a porn story than a short story (and definitely not a novel).
—Sheldon
3.5 stars **** it is an easy and sweet story...
—Bookworm
