WL's Mainstream Gay Book Reviews - 30. Honestly Ben (Book 2 of Openly Straight Series) by Bill Konigsberg

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27230789-honestly-ben

Oh boy, this was a step down from the brilliant story concept and execution of Openly Straight. I read somewhere online that Bill Konigsberg had intended to create a trilogy for this book series, but after the reception of Honestly, Ben, he stopped. As a reader, I hate it when stories fall apart with so many open plots thread still left hanging. As a writer, I can understand why he did what he did after failing to connect with audiences and perhaps even causing some anger in a segment. I’m not looking to start arguments about this book, I will just leave my review as I see it. It isn’t as good as the original, but I don’t think it deserved the panning that some people in the LGBT gave it.

Length, it is 330 pages long as a book and 9 hours 16 minutes on audible. Again, this isn’t light reading and I can understand if the payoff didn’t pan out as well as some readers had hoped for.

Plot: Ben Carver, the romantic interest of Rafe Goldberg from the first novel Openly Straight, is spending his winter break at home in New Hampshire with his old-fashioned family. He is still dealing with his only gay love affair with Rafe from the last term of school and he is afraid of not meeting his father’s expectations of him, both academically and in terms of his sexuality. Ben returns to school for the second semester getting good news about receiving an academic award from a foundation based on a dead Vietnam era student of the private school. He also gets voted in as the new captain of the baseball team. He even meets a new girl from a private school similar to his own, named Hannah, who is beautiful and open-minded to a fault. Yet, Ben discovers that He also discovers that there are poisonous issues within the team dynamic that needs to be addressed. He discovers that the scholarship he was receiving for college would be given under a lie about a dead veteran, who did not support Vietnam war and whose memory is being abused to promote a false historical narrative. Finally, without Rafe in his life, he was missing something important. Ben realized he was missing part of himself without having Ben in it, he and Hannah broke up unhappily and acerbically, then Ben rekindles and heightens his romantic relationship with Rafe as the start of his own journey to self-actualization. All of these truths culminate towards a major seed change at the end of the novel.

Review: I’ll first address the issue that has plagued the LGBT community about this book. Ben does not identify as bisexual and continues to claim he is straight until the end of the novel. Bill Konigsberg noted terms like bisexual invisibility toward the end of the novel, but it was too little and too late for most readers. Ben was unwilling and unable to accept himself as anything, but straight. Yet, he accepts he loves and needs to be with Rafe, because Rafe was and is his soulmate, a guy who he can talk about anything with and loves without reservation. I get it, Ben’s portrayal pissed people off, even more than Rafe’s decision in the first book to pretend to be straight after coming out and being openly gay for years. However, I have to question the haters with one simple question: What is Ben’s truth to himself?

That’s how I argue the merits of Ben’s character, he is a young man with a lot of emotional baggage. You can’t seriously remove all of that overnight or even with the love a soulmate. Realistically, not romantically, Ben needs to feel his own way towards the goal of self-actualization. He’s probably bisexual or bi-curious, you can even just call it “queer” just for a simplified definition. However, what he is not is heterosexual and he isn’t ready to accept that truth in himself; even Rafe gets that part about him, when Ben worries boil over. There’s no shortage of love between them, but Ben’s truth is still evolving and we as readers can’t force something on someone, who isn’t ready for it.

I also enjoyed the psychology of verbal and mental abuse that Ben is portrayed to have suffered at the hands of his overbearing conservative minded father. New Hampshire is a rugged state with people of that predilection, who cling to a mode of thought that probably can't survive. The world as it existed generations ago is dead, the cold reality is that you can't expect reality to fit what experience has taught you would. In his father's view, there are no gay or bisexual people in his family of normal country folk as those are urban pursuits, farmers are the only hard working people, and academics is waste of unproductive time. It's an interesting conflict that helps keeps the plot strings and Ben's psychological hangups believable.

Truth is also at the heart of various topics in this book, which is the second point I want to address. This point is where I will call out negatives and what makes this book weaker than its predecessor. Ben’s search for truth is meandering throughout the book from his captaincy of the baseball team to his uncovering of the college scholarship to his cheating scandal and on. Bill Konigsberg lost his way in this book due to trying to find Ben's truth through plot, he tried to add far too many plot details and conflicts for Ben to deal with. I love the idea of character dealing with multiple issues and seeking to find themselves through it, but Ben’s struggles didn’t feel organic to his character. It was too much to juggle between plots, ultimately the ending fell through because of it.

As for the side-characters, both returning ones like Albie and Toby, along with Ben’s mother and brother, it's a mixed bag. The over-the-top characters from book 1 were balanced off this time by the conservative minded family of Ben. Albie was more muted in his few appearances and Toby comes out again as "Gender Fluid", which is important concept, but I wished Bill Konigsberg developed it more. Ben's mother desire for independence and her potential love affair with a female herbalist was fascinating, but not explored enough. Ben’s brother’s plight at being in love with an obese girl was also quite interesting, it’s refreshing to find a character in contemporary fiction that isn’t bound by physical female beauty standards. Sadly, the plot line there was also underdeveloped. Hannah, Ben’s girlfriend, was also intriguing as Ben’s foil for part of the book, but her character fell apart, when Ben recognized that he didn’t feel complete without Rafe in his life after the school dance. Rafe was the only guy he wanted to be with, so it made both Ben and Hannah fall into an acerbic exchange of words rather than honestly relating. Hannah knew Ben was partially interested in Rafe before, so it makes no sense that she should jump into attack mode against Ben. She’s left as an afterthought by the end of the novel, something Ben uses to cling to what he perceived is his heterosexuality, while accepting his love for Rafe paradoxically. It makes no logical sense without further explanation or exposition. If Bill had just focused on his side-characters to help with Ben’s development rather than plot thrown at Ben, it would have progressed better. It’s another failing of the book, the side-characters just didn’t pop correctly or balance the plot.

My Review: 3 out of 5, I can only recommend it for people who want to see Ben and Rafe be partners. However, Ben is not developed to his full potential and the side-characters just didn’t feel right. It’s not as bad as some reviews would paint it, but I can’t dispute the problem with the plot. I get the story Bill Konigsberg wanted to tell and if he just focused on 1 or 2 plot conflicts with side character parallel development, it would have worked.