The Book High

Okay, if ever a series should have stopped after just two books, it was this one. Books three and four were both huge disappointments. Three more than four, but four was still frustrating. My biggest wish after the second book was to get to know Sam and Jory more and to get to see them together some more. When I realized that wasn't happening after the third book, I still had hope that maybe, perhaps in the fourth we'd be reminded why these two fell in love. But nope.

Jory spends nearly the entire book running around trying to be a hero while Sam just lay in his hospital bed and yelled a lot. Even Dane, who was totally amazing in the second book and nearly absent in the third, just annoyed me in this book.

There are moments, though, when we see them happy and together, and that--together with getting to see a little more of Jory being Jory and less of Jory being drunk--earn this one two stars.

I was almost leaning toward four until I read that horrific final chapter. After making it through four books with them, we skip their wedding, and end up a year later at Sam's brother's wedding. Okay, I'm fine with books that have the epilogue fairly far into the future, I think, it lets us see that they're still happy even after years together. But, it seems that the point of the epilogue wasn't to let us see that they're still happy.

Up until then, I had disagreed with the reviews that call Sam controlling or domineering. Everything combined in that final chapter to make everyone involved look like the worst possible people imaginable.

First, Sam's brother's fiancee doesn't want anyone to know Sam is married to a guy. And everyone's fine with this. Everyone agrees to lie and to make Sam and especially Jory feel like their relationship isn't just as important as everyone else's. And THEN, the bride's single friend requests to be partnered with Sam in the bridal party. How could the bride have not known what her friend's intentions were? How could she have agreed to rearrange everything (something that shocked even the people asked to make the last-minute adjustments to programs and such) when she would know that it would give her friend the wrong idea? Wouldn't that have been a good time to maybe take the friend aside quietly and tell her (not the whole wedding, but just the girl about to make a fool of herself over a married gay man) the truth? But no, still no being sensible. Much better to lie to everyone some more and set everyone up to either get hurt or embarrassed.

Even when the bride went along with everything, Sam could have said something to the girl, or not flirted with her or... ugh! just done something! Instead he went along with it--oh, but wait. A huge deal was made about him not going out to catch the garter, because only SINGLE guys did that. Aargh. Shouldn't only single guys flirt with and spend the week with people? Why does Sam get props for not doing that ONE thing when he went right along with everything else without caring about how it made Jory feel.

And then to not even consider the poor girl's feelings in all of this. She didn't know that Sam was married, and I'm sure she probably would have acted much differently if she had. How was it fair to lead her on and embarrass her like that?

And then the way Sam reacted when they got back to their room right at the end. Laughing at how cute it was that Jory was jealous. That's the part that finally convinced me to agree with everyone who had all along been calling Sam selfish and controlling and other bad names. It just seems to me that someone who loves their partner as much as Sam claims to love Jory wouldn't purposely put them through that much emotional angst just to get to say how cute they are when they're jealous. ESPECIALLY when there's a history of Sam leaving him for women. That one chapter completely destroyed any respect I had gained for Sam in the last books.

Okay, rant over. I really wish I'd stopped reading this series after the second book.