June is here, and that means we get our monthly fix from our Review Team. Check out this gem brought to us by Parker:

The Jerk-Off
by JLynch

Reviewer: Parker Owens
Status: Complete
Word Count: 98,033

It’s summer.  You need a good beach read – you know, the kind of story that engages your attention so much that you wind up frying in the hot sun, and which entertains enough that you ignore the subsequent pain. GA author JLynch serves up just such a story in The Jerk-Off.

Set in the summer lake country of Minnesota, JLynch plunges us into the world of young Thayer Dunn, working his first job at a local establishment serving boaters and summer residents on Bay Lake. Thayer has just begun to grow through his adolescence, but he hasn’t gone unnoticed. JLynch uses this to establish connections for us. We get the perfect amount of detail to put the reader into a colorful, sunlit scene, and enough local gossip to plug us into the social web of the community. Before long, readers are introduced to a wide cast of vividly drawn characters, all of whom appear to have an interest in this unassuming, backwater lake town.

In the narrative that follows, JLynch weaves a brightly colored tapestry, letting each character tell us of the dreams and interests that motivates them, often in stark conflict with another. Issues of inheritance, money and power are all concentrated around the shining waters of Bay Lake, shimmering in the summer heat. When murder and violence erupt, Thayer Dunn is there on the periphery, observing events even as they intrude on his own adolescent world. What develops is an amusing swirl of adult mystery, adolescent discovery, and plenty of local color. 

Often in summer romance novels, there appear to be formulaic steps that readers can tick off as they occur, one by one: an innocent aw-shucks moment, a first kiss, or a trip to the emergency room. Some of these ingredients are here, but everything is tinged with intrigue and charged with clandestine power plays. Thayer’s community seethes, but he’s on a different quest. What makes this story both believable and delightful is the way JLynch shows us that Thayer can be partly aware of matters going seriously awry in his hometown, while simultaneously living in the self-absorption of adolescence. Yet at the same time, the author lets us in on the lives of the adults in Thayer’s world, who seem pretty much as self-centered as he is.   

As for those adults, their complex and convoluted worlds belie the sparkling simplicity of the lakeside setting. Vacation towns full of summer visitors enjoying themselves can still mask webs of intricate relationships. Each chapter further lets the reader into those webs and entertains us while unspooling the mystery of murder and motivation. And yes, like any summer beach read, there’s a healthy dose of sex written in, too.

So make sure your beach has access to internet signal, so you can binge read this engaging story by a capable GA author. Remember the sunblock, because once you get started, you’ll forget that your tan has turned cherry red.  

Category: Fiction  Genres: Mystery, Romance, Literary Fiction   Sub-genres: Drama, Light Mystery, Coming of Age, Rich Boy, Contemporary Romance, Slice of Life  Tags: teen, young adult, gay, under 18, anal, first time, masturbate, oral  Rating: Mature