Title: The Way Things Go
Author: Roz Ripley
Genre: LGBTQ+ Fiction, Bisexual Romance
Book Blurb:
Luke is a bisexual boy with a rough past. He has dealt with a lot of abuse, causing issues that follow him into adulthood. As he navigates through the hardships the world throws at him, Luke must learn to trust himself and others. When love enters his life, he finds himself struggling to accept that he, too, deserves good things.
My Review:
A very powerful book. This book is full of pain. The Way Things Go is visceral, raw, and emotive. The character Luke committed the sin of daring to be born to parents who were too young to treat him like a human being. This aspect of the book evoked fury in my soul that practically exploded. There will be a special circle in Hell where parents who mistreat their children will suffer eternal damnation. There can be no forgiveness, there can be no forgetting.
The line in the book that made me guffaw was when the parents had the gall to say they wanted to 'make amends'. Any parent, ANY who punched a child in the face, can only begin to make amends by having their grown child punch them in the face - at least twice a day. There are no amends to be made for this behavior. There should be lengthy brutal prison sentences and eternal damnation.
That Luke reacted to this torture of an upbringing with anger is completely understandable. That Luke is living any semblance of life is a tribute to the raw courage of the human spirit. My only real regret in The Way Things Go is when given a chance, he kicks the wrong member of his family in the face.
A powerful book that is important for people who had to struggle with sexual identity. The pain that can happen simply by coming out can be very damaging. Reading The Way Things Go may allow people to vent and get through some of their own pain. A well-written but very hard-to-read book. A book about survival, anger, pain, righteous vengeance, and living. Not an easy book to read but an important work.
My Rating: 5 stars
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Author Biography:
Roz has been making up characters their whole life and writing since they were fourteen. Growing up, they realized that there weren't as many books with LGBTQ main characters as there were of books with straight and cisgender main characters. They started writing stories with entire casts of LGBTQ characters with the hope of adding more representation to literature. They hope to reach other LGBTQ people with their writing and make them feel seen.
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Reviewed by: Mr. N