The Evil Rant And Review Book

False Start

Author: kidkipp

Genre: Romance

No. chapters read: 5

First impression: Wow, another boyxboy straight from the title. Probably happening in high school. Probably awkward as fuck.

Cover: It's an anime guy. With no eyes. Looking up and blowing smoke or hot air, I can't tell. That's it. The whole cover. It tells me NOTHING about the story. It maybe tells me a little about what type of story it is.

I've just realized something. I don't like anime covers. I'm 197% sure it's a personal preference, but I can't take a book with cartoons on the cover seriously. Even if I really like anime-style drawing and I've seen some amazing covers. But... yeah, nope.

Cover rating: I'm not taking you seriously

Blurb: It's short, to the point and says what it needs to say. It doesn't give a lot of information on plot, but it's a romance, so it probably has no side plot and the plot is obvious and I'm going to say plot one more time just because repeating the same word a million times in one paragraph is good writing. Don't believe me? Check out Wattpad's hot list.

Blurb rating: Okay

Let's get it on!

Second impression: Ugh, this is actually pretty sweet.

Actual review (drum roll please):

Language/Writing: I'm going to assume that English is your first language or that you're one kickass foreign languages student because this shit is pretty good. I could actually focus on the story instead of getting pissed at missing commas and other crap like that. It also helps that your chapters are pretty short.

I'm not complaining.

Language rating: I'm not complaining

Plot: Ah, where to begin. The entire plot is a damn cliche. I've seen this a million times before, though I have to give you props for choosing the less-cliche I'm falling for my best friend in high school plot rather than the more annoying I'm falling in love with the new kid bad boy in high school cliche.

Now, seeing as the premise is a giant-ass cliche, the build up and characters are very important. One plus you get is the Asian setting (I have no idea where they are, but because of the names, I'm going to assume Kirghistan. That's in Asia, right?). The other plus is that nothing extraordinarily cliche jumped at me like starting with the character waking up, or the MC being a whiny little bitch with no friends and no life.

Of course, the MC kinda is a little bitch, but that can easily be explained by the fact that he's a boy in the boyxboy formula and Keiji is obviously the male. So it works.

So yeah, plot. Keiji and Kazuhiko (I actually had to letter-spell that) are best friends since childhood and go to high school together and Kazu sorta has this adorable crush/bro envy on Keiji because he's popular and very good at everything.

Then Keiji breaks his hand or something and can't play basketball anymore so he decides to take up running with Kazu. Which is not a retarded idea at all, because you don't need your hands to run, right? Except you kinda do, so I'm iffy whether he can do any sport, but whatever.

Then we have the cross team deciding to play gay spin the bottle for some reason even if they're all apparently straight and that's so how straight guys function, but Kazu discoverers that he might be gay. I'm shocked!

Plot rating: That's so NOT how straight guys function

Characters:

Kazuhiko: is our lovable gay protagonist who somehow has no idea if he's gay even if he's 18. I tend to think you discover this stuff when you're twelve, but meh, maybe he's a late bloomer. Anyway, he's a pretty pleasant vessel for the reader and is kinda sweet. A little pathetic, but sweet. I liked him.

Keiji: Except for being a giant waking cliche of perfection, I liked him. I would love his POV too because I'm sure he has some insecurities and is not as perfect as Kazu sees him, but yeah, he seems pretty perfect and is very likable.

Guys from the running team: Even if I didn't remember their names, they seemed fun and pretty distinctive. I'm also pretty sure 90% of them are gay.

Mr. Myagi: I mean the coach. I got a very good visual of him and he seems to have a solid personality. Like.

Character rating: Like

Why I stopped reading: I made up my mind about the story. While I have no problem with LGBT, I'm not a fan of mxm or fxf center romances because they're hard for me to relate to. I can appreciate the romance itself, but the characters interacting kinda leave me feeling awkward. Great. Now I'm homophobic.

Grade: Pass. While it may not be my thing, the writing is good and the characters interesting. I won't deny you your merits. 

Song: It just seemed to fit the sweetness of the story.