Review: Dark Chocolate and Raspberries

Title: Dark Chocolate and Raspberries
Author: Sui Lynn
Publisher: Silver Publishing
Publication Date: 23 April 2011
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 62,515 words

Blurb:
18-year-old Dylan's talent for music almost equals his diva mentality. A spoiled rich kid, Dylan enjoys pushing people around. Or does he? When Taj is charged with taking Dylan under his wing, he discovers the shy boy behind the diva mask.

But Dylan walks in on Taj kissing Ben, their budding feelings may not be able to withstand the blow. Stunned, Dylan runs from the room. Taj gives chase, trying to catch him to tell him the kiss he saw was the result of a game played in the dorm called 'Raspberries'. Will their love blossom into kisses, drown in drunken chocolates, or erupt in raucous raspberries in Dark Chocolate and Raspberries?


Rating: 2 out of 5


Review:

Main Characters:
Dylan is a young man fresh out of high school, fleeing a less-than-ideal home life to attend Trinity University, where he'll be able to focus on his singing. He maintains a diva personality, looking down on anyone who's not at his level and pushing away everyone else, to mask his personal pain, trapped with a mentally ill mother and estranged father. He's also not gay, or so he says.

As a character, I just could not connect to him; I spent much of the book actively hating him. His diva personality is inconsistent and often silly, and his level of obsession with Taj makes me think that his mother isn't the only mentally ill one in the family; there's a point in the story at which he becomes so jealous of girls flirting with an uninterested Taj that he vomits--a little extreme to me, and certainly not healthy behavior.

Taj is a bit older and better balanced. He performs with various choir groups, helps out in different aspects of university, and has a tight circle of friends. He's apparently dated before, though nothing of his past boyfriends ever comes out. Although he's better balanced emotionally, his character is still inconsistent--he very rarely acts his age, coming across as much to mature to be believable. At the story's climax, Taj rides to the rescue when Dylan is trapped into taking care of his unstable mother. He drags Dylan away from his mother as she's abusing him, then dials a psychiatrist (presumably, as her actual job description is never revealed) he just so happens to know who just so happens to work in the psychiatric unit of the nearby hospital. How does he know this woman? Why should he need to call her before he calls 911 when the first responders are perfectly capable of notifying the hospital prior to their arrival that they have a psychiatric case and there's no guarantee that she would be staffing the unit at the time? Further, he seems awfully knowledgeable about admittance procedures for mentally ill patients, especially violent ones who are forcibly committed. It's rather different than his taking a depressed friend for treatment, and the overlap isn't enough to explain his knowledge. To add to my suspension of disbelief, he also all but blackmails Dylan's father (despite his disclaimer that it's not blackmail) into leaving Dylan alone. Altogether, it was just way too much for me.

Chemistry:
The attraction between Dylan and Taj goes from zero to sixty in a very short span of time. There's almost no tension for a good portion of the beginning, and suddenly Taj is desperate to kiss Dylan while Dylan has erotic dreams of Taj. The lack of lead-up made their getting together a bit jarring, and their obsession with each other even more so.

The level of obsession is what honestly put me off the most. Taj is worried that Dylan will be jealous that Taj is leaving their make-out session to be with another man, when what he's doing is taking the other man to the hospital. Dylan, fully aware that Taj has other responsibilities one day, is determined to have a shit day because Taj isn't there with him. It escalates ridiculously.

And then there's the testing. As soon as Taj and Dylan identify as a couple, Taj is insistent that they both get tested before they have sex (or even come together, apparently). Okay--a little weird, but okay. Later, it comes out that Taj has been intimate with other men and worn a condom. My question became: why is it okay for Taj to wear a condom with other men but require testing before he can so much as cop a feel with Dylan? I was further baffled when Taj and Dylan got a hotel room after submitting the blood for testing--why couldn't they do that before, if they didn't have results anyway?--and when they planned to use a condom after the testing. Wasn't the whole point of the testing to establish their lack of need for a condom? It's not like Dylan's going to get pregnant. The extreme emphasis of the testing and the contradictory behaviors when it came to sex became rather aggravating after a while.

Secondary Characters:
The supporting cast was nearly as frustrating as Dylan and Taj, full of caricatures without much substance. Dylan's parents in particular fall short of what they could have been; his father was reduced to a manipulative, blustering asshole, while his mother became an insane whore. Although the characterizations made sense in concept, there just wasn't anything there to flesh them out, to make their behaviors believable as functional human beings. I also found Paul to be downright annoying--again, a caricature with nothing behind him to make his mannerisms anything but stereotypically queeny and almost offensive.

Story:
The characters were unfortunately not the only weakness; the story showed its cracks, too. It's disjointed and jerky, with the climax having very little to do with the rest of the story leading up to it. Just a little bit of foreshadowing couldn't have hurt.

The reactions of some characters also don't necessarily make sense. To convince Dylan to take care of his mother, Dylan's father threatens to expose Dylan's relationship with his mother to the world. Given that Dylan's father's concern is his own reputation, I fail to see how making the world aware that he let his wife abuse their son for years after abandoning them both would further his cause. I also don't understand Dylan's reaction. I can understand the shame aspect--who wants the world to know that they've been a victim for most of their life? But why on earth would being the victim of abuse ruin any career he might have?

For a story that focused so much on Dylan and Taj being musicians, too, the music fell by the wayside awfully quickly. Before they get together, there's plenty of mention of Dylan singing, or Taj's groups. Later, there's an offhand mention of them singing together in choir, but no further mention of anything else choir-related. It seemed lax.

Writing:
Commas, commas everywhere, but not a pause to need. I'm a comma queen, and even I found the usage of commas to be excessive here. Commas frequently combined sentences; what should have been two or three sentences is spliced into one awkward sentence. For example: He smiled to himself, the aloof attitude Dylan exuded when people were near had a firm hold, but despite Taj telling him he was gay, Dylan had let him in when they were alone.

Even without the comma issues, I found the writing to be a bit disjointed.

Dylan couldn't help becoming irritated. He wanted the girls to leave them alone. Taj belonged to him. Dylan glared at the two babbling girls and his ire increased, but they ignored him. Their incessant drivel rubbed Dylan's nerves raw. Taj chatted politely for a while, but seemed to sense Dylan's growing discomfort and soon tried to end the conversation.

The reiteration and repetition is prevalent throughout, and the style is just not one that corresponds with my tastes at all.

There are also quite a few errors in general: missing punctuation, missing possessives, incorrect verb tenses, words that should have been deleted but weren't. Some proper nouns are also used improperly which, while not a big deal, didn't improve my opinion. (The two that really stuck out for me were Xbox (not X-box) and HIPPA (not Hippa).)

Other Thoughts:
One thing that threw me early on is a line of Taj's in which he proclaims that he thinks that words like gay and homosexual are just words people use to hurt other people. I can't pin down why it bothers me. It just seems so contrived, I think.

Overall:
In the end, it took me two weeks to read this book simply because I grew increasingly frustrated as I read, to the point that I'd have to put it down and walk away or abandon it entirely. If you don't mind obsessive characters and uneven storytelling, this might be the book for you. For me, there's just not enough of a happy medium to endear it to me.