I AM SO EXCITED THIS IS OUT. Thank you, Michelle, for being awesome and rocking so hard and being so patient with me as I liiiived my dreeeam of a co-review. :D

Read on for Nerds Heart YA shenanigans! Be sure to check out Part Two, as well!

 

Two boys, two stories, and all the vagaries of family, friends, and love interests.

Dylan: a creative kid from New York, artistically inclined and hopelessly in love with his best friend, playing it safe in all quarters while in the background his parents marriage has exploded and his brother is on the fast track to becoming a drug dealer–Dylan feels more disconnected from all of his family members than ever. And what does he do about the girl, anyway?

Charlie: tall and awkward, geek to the core, he can’t seem to fit in anywhere: not at school with his peers nor at home with his parents. Finding a boyfriend seems impossible in his small town and his best friend has moved on to a steady girlfriend, leaving him behind and lonely. Maybe the new boy at school will change things up, and Charlie will feel like he belongs to someone for the first time ever…but belonging comes with its own issues.

Nerds Heart YA Round Three, Match Two, Part One: Michelle and Renay throwdown on which dude takes the prize and moves on to compete against My Most Excellent Year.

Renay: I will be open and honest here and say that between The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine and The Screwed Up Life of Charlie the Second, I came out pretty damn confused about which book I liked more and why. I liked the flow of Dylan’s story, the ease of his personality, how he loved the people around him even when they annoyed him or hurt him, but the ride was bland. I liked the story Charlie had to tell, although I wasn’t crazy about him, but the story there: what complication. Charlie’s story was complicated in a way Dylan’s wasn’t, although both these books dealt with the same things: finding a partner, the trouble with parents, the friends that become extended family and cause problems. Charlie’s story had some extra oomph, though, a swipe to the heart that Dylan lacked for me. How about you? How did these books measure up for you when compared sided by side?

Michelle: I did too! I was really torn about which one to choose.

Dylan was such a muted and understated story that demonstrated profound dedication, loyalty and love for family. I enjoyed the relationships between he and everyone he ran into. Most particularly his brother. The dynamic between the two was awesome—the underlying bond and protectiveness but still a touch of sibling rivalry and resentment. It isn’t always perfect but when needed both will stand up for the other and stand as a united front.

Then there was Charlie this really overwhelming loud mouthed kid who made this grand entrance everywhere he went. It wasn’t necessarily the entrance he wanted more times than not but he was larger than life in a way that Dylan wasn’t. Using that persona as a mask for his fear of being different, to compensate for what he thought others might view as freakish (for lack of a better word I can’t think of right now) he tried to deflect the fact that he is gay by being obnoxious and overbearing.

I admit that Dylan’s story didn’t give me the same feeling Charlie’s did. Often times I was rooting for Charlie. I wanted he and First to get along, I wanted him to get the boy in the end. Bwahahaha! No pun intended of course…. Anywhooo, I wanted him to succeed far more than I did Dylan. I don’t know if that is because of who Charlie was, where he fit into social and familial structure or if it was because I knew from the jump that Dylan was going to be successful in the end so I didn’t NEED to root for him. Either way I felt more investment in Charlie’s story and outcome. That made the difference for me.

Renay: First question that’s been burning inside my brain since I finished both these books: Was Charlie a likeble person? I asked this in all seriousness because I spent the first half of this book unimpressed by the front Charlie put up for the world. Also, I am pretty over sexist, privileged white boys who sit around using sexual slurs against girls in their head when they don’t know them in any meaningful way, but also complain about being an outsider. Charlie was pretty cruel inside his head, which is par for the course when dealing with bullies, but at times it was taken to a level that startled me. Needless to say, no amount of teaspoons are going to help Charlie’s habit of devaluing groups of people at least until he grows up.

Michelle: I don’t know I kinda thought he fit the dork quotient pretty well. It could have been a defense mechanism for him to get all sassy with the girls and jocks. Let’s face it Bink’s girlfriend wasn’t all that likeable either. She was a pretty controlling and condescending bitch in her own right.

Renay: It did fit, I agree: it was a defense mechanism, just one I don’t get too impressed with, because—it’s like, this is how male teenagers think, in gendered slurs and insults? It’s not very intelligent, which was disappointing because otherwise Charlie was pretty smart. I don’t honestly know how I felt about Dana; the truth is, we are seeing her through Charlie’s eyes, eyes that are biased against her in the first place for what he sees as poaching and being, well, someone Bink wants to spend time with who isn’t him. We don’t know the details, because we’re not privy to the relationship. I’m therefore less inclined to take his word on the type of girl Dana was considering how often he calls other girls sluts and whores just because he doesn’t like their behavior toward him. Sorry, Charlie! Back to the point: he was an outsider, connected to this group of people through Bink. It was an interesting contrast to Dylan, I thought? That was interesting: Charlie and Dylan both were pretty angry, but had different reasons for being so. Charlie dealt with a lot of his anger by funneling through general verbal slagging off that happens when teenagers are clever already but don’t know how to be creative with it. Dylan handles his differently: with silences, with physical activity, with outright violence.

Michelle: But that just showcased the fundamental differences in the characters. One internalizes the other not so much. I actually think it’s quite interesting that here we have two books with teenage boys as the main character (I mean seriously, how often does that happen at the same time!) and they are at complete opposite ends of the spectrum personality wise. Amazingly though, they both end up in pretty much the exact same situations and with the same ultimate resolutions. Recognition and acceptance of family, in a relationship with a partner they love (or are on the way to loving) and enjoying a group of solid friends. The stories were more than obviously told quite differently but they were pretty much the same story in the end. Don’t you think?

Renay: That’s a really great way to put it. The stories were completely different, even at cross purposes at times, but all the similarities are all too clear when you break them down (although I’ll admit I still think one story has more depth than the other! I won’t give up!).

Let’s talk about sexy times (because that’s totally what this book was about, no lie, internets!) Was all the hardcore sex in Charlie’s story necessary to its plot? Was the story served by including it?

Michelle: Hell to the NO! While sexuality was a prevalent theme throughout the book I don’t know that we needed the constant masturbation and explicit descriptions of sex (at least in Charlie anyway) as part of the whole ball of wax. Sure boys that age are horny no question, sure they may even jerk off daily (though I’m not entirely sure they do it as much as we were led to believe but I’m a girl so I can’t really attest to it 100%) but it was like it was the only thing Charlie seemed to think about almost all the time. Personally, I would have preferred it to be a little less about his hormones and acting on urges. Having said that in the end, I don’t think it necessarily hurt the story but it certainly didn’t help it either. It was just kinda there a lot of the time. Also was it necessary for Charlie to lust after every guy in the story? Sometimes friends really are just friends. Shit I don’t wanna bang every guy I know.

Renay: I think we’ll probably disagree on that point. ;) The format lended itself pretty well to including Charlie’s excessive sharing—because he’s sharing with himself, he’s talking to himself, the only person he knows he can trust. It’s hard, because I’m about 10+ years past sexual awakening and all that jazz, but I remember wanting to get my hands on books that were explicit just to figure out what was going on. Maybe in the end I think this book would be great to put into the hands of some boys and say “go to town” because, to be frank, it’s…this book is about processes? The fact that in GLBTQ YA literature I have not yet once run into a book that goes, “Well, I think I’ll have a anal sex scene now!” is pretty telling—it’s all fluffy language and fade-to-blacks and I read plenty of heterosexual romances like that as a teen that drove me up the wall, until I wised up and picked up some Harlequins. So I think more than just serving the story, it serves the kids who are going to read it. It says: look, here is this process, and it’s just like all the other sex out there: pretty awkward looking, and messy, and complicated. It says, by the end of the book, which I won’t spoil: good damn luck if you have sex with someone with high expectations. You’ll need it.

On the other hand: Dylan’s story: sex and hooking up was still a big part of the part, it was just quiet; subtle. Did Dylan’s story handle the sex topic better than Charlie, by being less explicit?

Michelle: Let me clarify by saying that Charlie being gay and the explicit description of anal sex and other intimate details wasn’t what turned me off I would have felt the same (re: too much sex in the story) about hetero sex. It’s the reason I don’t read erotica. I don’t need that much in a story realistic or not. It was the fact that at times I felt like it was ALL he thought about and that diminished the larger story for me. Whether he was joking about it or trying to diffuse his own feelings of inadequacy about intimacy it got old to see him relate everything to jerking off or getting together with a guy. I would have liked to have seen some more depth. Again, while I get the teenage boys really ARE horny and really DO think that way as a reader I would have enjoyed it more to have had a tad bit less of that shown to me and a touch bit more of his inner thoughts on a more subdued level.

But to put a positive spin on the thematic sexuality I will say that I do think that the scene where he and Rob finally do have sex (the most explicit in the story) was tastefully done. There was a tentative nature to both, it wasn’t a wham bam thank you ma’am situation, yet it was still awkward and messy—as a reader I appreciated that. Knowing that it was Charlie’s first time I was glad to see there were nerves and discomfort and all sorts of virginal starts and stops. I was also glad that his partner Rob took care to be as understanding and gentle as possible. It was quite well done.

As for Dylan I didn’t think sex played as big a role because that story didn’t focus as much on him independently as it did on his role as part of a larger family and group of friends. If that makes sense at all…. I felt like Dylan’s story demonstrated his character more as a cog in the wheel where Charlie was the wheel that the cogs worked within. Charlie’s story really was about his homosexuality with splashes of family drama and social structure issues so of course sex would be more prevalent where Dylan’s story really was centered around that family drama and some of the issues with sex happened to be incidentally part of that.

Renay: Well, I know I probably didn’t have as big of a problem with the sex in Charlie because well, I sit around in my spare time writing and reading erotica. ;) If we’re going to be honest about why our takes on Charlie’s story differ so much, why not! I already have a reputation, so I’ll just out myself. I get you, though!

I suppose why I think sex played a big role in Dylan’s story because it did for the side characters and Dylan in the context of other people. The premise is that a mother left for another man (and everyone knows what leaving for another man entails), the only girl in the band bounces between two band members and Dylan himself as he lobbies for the girl ending up with his brother. She’s also treated like an sexual object rather than a character, but that’s a rant for another time. Sex informs this story, this story is based on what some people would call sexual infidelity, where a woman leaves her husband to go shack up with another dude. Apparently that’s bad, even if the father is kind of a douchebag, because the book treats it as bad.

Michelle: Good point! I’d not looked at it this way. I think my perception of sex in Dylan is so subdued because in Charlie it was so prevalent. While Dylan’s mom did leave her father for another man (so it was thought) there wasn’t any actual sexual contact that we were privy to seeing. Even the sex between Dylan’s brother and his girlfriend was fade to black after glow stuff. So more was left to the imagination.

Here’s a question I have. Do you think Dylan’s story would have changed significantly if there was more focus on that intimacy? If we’d seen more of it as compared to what we did see? Would it have even fit in as it did with Charlie? At least in Charlie all the masturbation and eventually sex fit the story. It may have been excessive for me but I didn’t think it didn’t fit in. You know what I mean?

Renay: It would have changed the story, yes, but who know whether it would have been bad or good: Dylan, for all intents, is still pretty young and innocent, although we could put some scare quotes around that. I think making it more explicit would have forced the author to deal with the mother-harrs-off sideplot that informs a lot of the family tension in the story, which is maybe why it was put to the side in favor of emotional intimacy and brother-love that made me heart the end of this story so much. I would have liked that side story to have been dealt with a little more, but I had stars in my eyes for Dylan and Randy and how they come back together, which was so awesome and well done and there was hugging and late night talks in the dark, so you know! If adding more explicit commentary to the book meant that relationship was changed, or removed, then I am so glad it wasn’t there.

Feel free to tell me you lavished hearts all over the brotherly love in this book so I don’t feel so weird thinking that the point of the story wasn’t just to hook Dylan and Angie up, but Dylan and Randy, too. I don’t want to be the freak in the room.

To find out whether Michelle flung hearts (or judgment! for being weird!) check out Part Two of our review and the final decision over at her pad. :D