Reviewer:
Bob Lind, Echo Magazine
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books, April 2013
Pages: 264
Four Stars Out of Five
Growing up, Tip was never that close to his much older brothers,
Thad and Tye, barely remembering them attending high school when Tip was just starting
school. The memories end there, since both brothers disappeared mysteriously
one day, and were never talked about again by Tip's deeply-religious parents.
Still, a constant memory remained in the house, where their mother maintained
their shared bedroom, which was otherwise locked to keep Tip out of it. More
than a decade has passed, and Tip is now learning more about his brothers,
having managed to sneak Thad's journal out of the room, when his mother forgot
to lock it.
The descriptions of gay sexual activity in the journal helps Tip
realize his own attractions to other guys, which he had previously suppressed
in order to maintain the façade of a typical high school jock in this small
rural Oregon town. He began to explore those feelings with two other closeted
swim team members, and shares part of the journals with them. The journals talk
about a ritualistic gay pagan group, in which both of his brothers became
involved through a professor at their college. Tip is also driven by wanting to
know what happened to his brothers, and uses clues from the journal to find
them, even though he realizes the results might "out" him to his
deeply-religious, conservative parents and fellow students, which might result
in his own subsequent "disappearance."
An engaging, well-written story, giving an extreme example of
the problems that a forced religious background may have on a gay teen.
There is significant explicit content, making it inappropriate
for younger teen readers.
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