A review by emergencyjam
One Man Guy by Michael Barakiva

1.0

***not a spoiler-free review***

One Man Guy is a young adult novel starring an Armenian teen who is really just trying his best. He’s just trying to please his parents, be a good friend, be a good student, and he’s totally not gay.

Like, totally. For sure not a gay boy.

Surprise, he actually is a gay boy, and for someone who didn’t previously know they were a gay boy, he takes it REALLY well. Which is great! I love reading books where being gay isn’t a big deal. Unfortunately, that is one on a very, VERY small list of things I actually liked about the book.

Overall, I’m actually very disappointed with this book. I got so excited when I saw that the book was blurbed by none other than E. Lockhart, author of some of my favourite books (We Were Liars and the The Boyfriend List series). But you know what? E. Lockhart let me down.

I want to begin by reiterating that I totally loved that being gay wasn’t an issue in the book. Alek (our fearless Armenian hero) didn’t go through a giant crisis upon discovering his gayness. Ethan (Blonde Bad Boy of Alek’s dreams) is unapologetically out and his friends could literally care less. They have skateboarding to do. His friends and family don’t even take it badly, either. This is honestly refreshing. Thanks, Michael.

There was also a really funny section of dialogue on page 228 about roses: “I did what any self-respecting guy would do. I returned all the Armenian books I bought this summer and used that money to have a dozen roses delivered to her house with a note begging for her forgiveness and telling her that if she took me back, I’d be her slave forever.” I chuckled.

And now, onto what I didn’t like. There is … a lot.

You can really, REALLY tell that this was Michael Barakiva’s first book. It was overflowing with annoying tropes and clichés. Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with a cliché here and there, and sometimes tropes are fun. But not when the entire book relies on them to exist. Of the top of my head: inexperienced closeted gay falls for a more experienced, out, older, cool gay; straight girl falls for her gay best friend but doesn’t know that he’s gay; best friend is Not Like Other Girls; overbearing parents; older sibling is perfect and the apple of their parent’s affection while the younger sibling can’t do anything right. And that’s only a few of them!

Speaking of the best friend being Not Like Other Girls: Becky. You see, Becky is cool. Becky likes old movies. Becky rollerblades. She is SO not like other girls! There is literally a whole page of dialogue where Becky and Alek make fun of stereotypical popular and “slutty” girls and honestly? It was in really poor taste. And as a feminist woman, it frankly made me uncomfortable. I actually decided to drop the book when I read that, but I thought that I'd pick it back up again because I believe in second chances.

And as a queer woman, the views expressed in the book regarding female sexuality kind of offended me. From what I’m to gather after reading this book, women are just naturally more fluid when it comes to their sexuality. Becky expressing interest in kissing other girls probably doesn’t mean anything. Maybe she’s bisexual but probably not. Which is fine, except not how it was written.

And then, and this is really the icing on the cake for me. There is a woman in the book who, after seeing Alek and Ethan being happily adorable and cute and gay together, says that being gay is really “in” right now and that she’s totally thought about becoming a “lesbo.” Nobody corrects her. Nobody explains to her that, no, being gay isn’t a fad. You don’t just decide to be attracted to the same gender as yourself. I actually flipped back to see when this book was published when I read this exchange.

This book was published in 2014.

I can’t believe that a gay man actually sat down and wrote this and published it in the year 2014.

And that is why this book is only getting one star from this reader.