REVIEW: Glen & Tyler's Honeymoon Adventure by J.B. Sanders

Glen & Tyler's Honeymoon Adventure by J.B. Sanders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Over the top and gratuitous — I love it!

+ the characters

Glen and Tyler rocked. I liked how the book practically took no time in making the two knobheads realize they loved each other. The couple was adorable. I liked how Tyler quickly revealed himself as a secret genius. I liked how Glen balanced Tyler out by keeping Tyler down to earth, nice, and essentially from becoming into the evil lunatic stereotype that runs in Tyler’s dysfunctional family.

I liked how not all of Tyler’s dysfunctional family were evil and even though they were not evil they were still a shade of lunatic. As for Tyler’s exes, it was heartening to see that not all of them were evil exes; I wished Stacey stayed throughout the book. There weren’t enough strong female characters in the story for my liking among the supporting characters which largely consisted of dudes and their guns.

+ the plot

The plot also rocked. It was a long book, but things were happening so fast that I never felt it was long and after I finished the book I wanted to read the sequel immediately. The plot didn’t start till halfway, which sounds like a bad thing and usually it is but in this book it was not. I enjoyed the couple’s little adventures as they slay random homophobes, save the world of hockey, and use their money to make the world a better place. I loved the enchilada of revenge fantasies and wish-fulfillment.

When the plot finally started, the thriller kicked in. I loved how Glen and Tyler always faced the danger together with — this is greatly important — open communications unlike in the other mm-romantic suspenses I usually read where the couple are apart, whether it be physical or mental distance or both, and they don’t share feelings and plans. In those romances, the suspense serves as the vehicle for the couple to reach a place of trust and love — not in this book. I liked the fact that book began with the two guys knowing each other for years and thus had a solid foundation of trust already built.

I loved how the good guys were on top of the danger with the planning, doing, and, most important, succeeding. It was a constant pleasure watching the bad guys get their comeuppance. It almost read like a video game where the warrior goes on a quest, collects allies along the way, defeats monsters, finds treasures to gets better equipment and magic, and ultimately rescues the princess or saves the kingdom or whatever the mission of the greater good is. However, in this story, the couple were together and rich — obscenely rich — and powerful from the start so it was more like a video game with cheats activated, and all that was needed of me was to sit back and enjoy the ride as they “PWN” one enemy after the next.

Only once did the plot’s over the top-ness got too over the top for me, and that was when couple and their bodyguards flew coach. During that scene, the plot paused for a couple pages and went out of its way to spotlight a political issue in the form of a random, woe-is-them gay couple. While I couldn’t agree more about the political commentary, I didn’t appreciate it. The airplane scene was cringe-worthy preachy and hideously contrived.

Other than that, the only thing would I have changed about the plot was the smut, to be specific its lack thereof, being the incorrigible smut fan that I am. The series spin-off the smut as erotica short stories. However, the short stories are illustrated which I am 100% on board.

+ the editing

But unlike smut, editing is not optional. The book, or at least its Smashwords edition, required another round of editing. I spotted several typos:

10.66% into the book: “Looks like Tyler fantasies are a Merriwether pass-time.” should be pastime.

11.69%: Glen’s Dad rolled back a little on his heals. should be heels

43.40%: It began to dawn on the reports that Tyler knew all their names. should be reporters

51.96%: Two instances of the name “Maureen” when it should be “Mary”

59.41%: “I surrender,” he said in a think accent. should be thick

67.32%: They never dock there, and probably haven’t ever seen it’s shores should be its

69.95%: The he raised his hands over his head. should be Then

And there's probably a few more I didn't notice. But what irked me was not the typos, it was the formatting. Paragraph indentations were haywire. The ebook was rendered readable only because of my magical reading app which super-thankfully allowed me to read annoyance-free and with undiminished enjoyment.

In Conclusion

I rate Glen & Tyler’s Honeymoon Adventure 4-stars for I really liked it, bumped up to a star for its re-readability. The book was a huge cheer booster. A big grin forcibly took over my face as I read it.

Update: 29 May 2013. Formatting issue is fixed.

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