#r: kevin van whye

[paperbackd]

Book review: Date Me, Bryson Keller by Kevin Van Whye

I really wanted to like this book. On the surface, it looked perfect. Adorable cover, diverse characters, classic rom-com premise. Sadly, Date Me, Bryson Keller lacks the heart and substance all great rom-coms need. 

When Bryson Keller is dared to date someone new each week - the first person to ask him out on Monday morning - few think he can do it. He may be the king of Fairvale Academy, but he's never really dated before. Until a boy asks him out, and everything changes.

Narratively, Date Me, Bryson Keller starts off strong with the classic fake dating set-up, but quickly spirals. Plot points which didn’t fit the premise were forced in at the expense of believability. The relationship between Kai and Bryson developed from them hanging out together to professing their love for each other in the span of a couple of days. And awful things (forced outing, unsupportive parents, homophobic attacks) seemed to happen to the main pairing just so that the ‘good guys’ could turn around and point out how awful they were.

Which brings me to the second major problem I had with this book - the characterisation. None of the characters felt like real people; instead, they read like the author’s mouthpieces. I lost count of the number of times either Kai or Bryson gave an impassioned speech (to seemingly no one) about bigotry. I also found the speed at which Kai’s parents went from being openly homophobic to accepting of their gay son jarring. It felt like they were only homophobic when the plot needed them to be; when the story needed to be quickly wrapped up with a happy ending someone gave them a rousing speech about how they should be ashamed of themselves and they magically became better people.

I'm sure the author meant for Kai's happy ending after so much hardship to be seen as a positive, but it came across as dismissive of the issues it was preaching against, since everything was solved so easily. All in all, it was uncomfortable to read.

Many thanks to Penguin for providing a copy of Date Me, Bryson Keller. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Publisher: Penguin Rating: 1 star | ★✰✰✰✰ Review cross-posted to Goodreads

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