The Brilliant Boy Billionaire
by Altimexis

Reviewer: W_L
Status: Complete
Word Count: 474,949

The primary reason for reading Brilliant Boy Billionaire is its sense of first-person adventure, especially as someone who has encountered similar stories over the years, such as my first, Dewey Writer's Brian and Pete series, starting with For the Love of Pete, where the excitement of a young gay teen is explored with a complex plot and backdrop. At first, it felt like an epic road trip type story with the protagonist seeking safety and a place to belong.

The first half of this story has a lot of interesting first steps for our main character, who might be "brilliant" but he notably has major issues in emotional intelligence and experience beyond technical knowledge. However, having to leave home due to an abusive situation and a major crime he committed with justification, Adam, sometimes known as Simon (rarely though), and often known as JJ (his main alias) isn't a perfect hero. He messes up a lot and he lives with his regrets. The story's rich plot includes a lot of technical details on various things from speculative physics and computer science to mundane technical details about photography and bicycle repair. In addition to a good character arc and technical details, JJ has a kinky side that would best be characterized as a fetishist, which adds a few degrees of spice to the passionate scenes if you are interested in those elements. 

The second half of the story deals with his journey to accept his past and grow. Despite being a genius, he's still human. He learns from life experiences, seeks out human connections, and I think found real happiness with a partner, who matches him. Though his choice in partner felt like it could have used more development, this is not a romance-centered story. Some nuances are left to our imagination.

Brilliant Boy Billionaire creates a series of plot events that make me stop in the middle of chapters with joy and sadness. Life is continuously throwing new technical issues for the main character, but Altimex handles each new technical point with a depth of detail to resolutions that makes the character relatable, not as a Gary Stu tech genius with technobabble solutions every time but a practical person with limitations placed by reality. 

Not all things were solved perfectly by the Altimexis, especially the emotional scenes of JJ battling his evil "father" in his nightmares for a decade without severe real-world fallout, but I thought Altimexis dealt with the PTSD of child abuse with a good deal of restraint and respect as much as he could without compromising the narrative. 

I recommend this story, which is 84 chapters long and over 470K words because it's an epic adventure of a gay man's journey to find happiness despite his horrible beginnings in life. It may require you to hold some suspension of belief, but in exchange, you will get a great tale from the backwoods of Indiana to the major cities of the United States as a once-in-a-generation great person's life is described to you from their perspective. 

Category: Fiction  Genres:  Action/Adventure, General Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction  Sub-genres: Adventure, Soft Sci-Fi, Coming of Age, Rich Boy, Contemporary Romance  Tags: teen, gay, casual, coming of age, abuse  Rating: Mature