Pretty Pretty Boys

Pretty Pretty Boys (2017) Gregory Ashe

Emery Hazard is given the choice of being fired or being sent home to join the Wahredua police force. Emery decides to take the opportunity to discover what really happened to his friend Jeff Langham, who died when they were in high school.

Once, after escaping from his house, he had walked the MP lines at night, and it had been so dark that he couldn’t see his hand in front his face. Then there had been a single light in the distance, and the rumble under his feet, and Hazard had leaped clear of the tracks just before the train rushed past. As soon as the light was gone, the blackness returned, broken only by the sparking wheels along the rails. That was the night he had known he was alone in the universe, and he’d known that he, Emery Hazard, was the only one responsible for himself.

What he doesn’t want is to deal with his tormentors from high school.

Except that one of those tormentors is now his partner.

John-Henry Somerset was the prom king and loved by everyone in high school. But he deeply regrets how he and his friends treated Emery Hazard, and hopes that he can apologize for what happened.

He also hopes that Emery will be able to help the department with the recent LGBT crimes that have hit the small Ozark college town.

You know she said the street signs should be white? Not green. They’ve got green street signs everywhere I’ve ever been, but Bruer says they should be white. Represents purity.

The story was interesting, and I wanted to know what had happened between Emery and Somers when they were teenages (as well as what had happened to Jeff).

Be aware, the story is dark. Bad things happen, including the discover of a past sexual assault. And both Emery and Somers are really screwed up.

The past stayed with you. The past was like poison, and it built up in you like poison, like lead in your tap water, until it killed you.

People couldn’t forget, not the really awful things. They carried the past with them, sharpened it like a knife, and when you weren’t looking, when you least suspected it, they cut your heart out.

That wasn’t a problem for me, but it is dark.

My problems with the book were that it needed a solid editor and copy editor.

“You can find whoever did that shit to Nico’s garage,” Nico said.

That’s what Nico told us, right? That Chendo was cheating on him. That’s why they had that big fight. That’s why Chendo was moving out of the house when we showed up.”

I’m still not clear whose house it was.

There were lots of little mistakes like that which were very distracting, since they took me out of the story as I tried to figure out just who was where with what.

It certainly wasn’t a deal-breaker, since the book was inexpensive. Nor was it that surprising, since the book was self-published. But it was distracting, and if things like that bother you, this story is NOT for you.

But I did buy the next book in the series.
Rating: 6/10

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