Reviews

I'm conflicted on this one.

Just By Looking at Him was a cover buy for me. Admittedly after purchasing it it sat on my shelves for about a year. I decided to pick it up as part of the Diverse Baseline Challenge. One of the prompts for the month of April is to read a book with chronic illness or pain representation. Elliot, our main character is a disabled gay man with cerebral palsy and he is set on burning down his life (metaphorically). Elliot has been in a long term relationship that has become stale. Although he is moderately well off with a stable job and in a loving relationship, he starts to feel like life is passing him by. He wants a chance to be reckless so he begins to have clandestine meet ups with sex workers unbeknownst to his boyfriend.

The book honestly took me by surprise. It reads very modern. There are tons of self degrading jokes and references to the 2000s. Some parts had me laughing out loud. Other parts felt a bit repetitive.

Elliot is an unlikeable character. You want to root for him and then he does sometime that will piss you off. We follow him on a journey of self-acceptable and growth.

If you're someone who loves reading books about messy relationships or messy people, this one will definitely scratch that itch.

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2.0

Just by Looking at Him by Ryan O’Connell has a unique setup. It is about Elliott, a disabled gay TV writer in L.A. who essentially blows up his life in order to enact a necessary change. It was laugh-out-loud funny and had a lot of heart. Elliott is struggling. After six years, his relationship is flatlining. Rather than address this, he strikes up a minor obsession with River Banks, a sex worker he’s (accidentally) referred to by his boss, and a major obsession with alcohol.
O’Connell (a star of Netflix’s Queer as Folk reboot, which is on my to-watch list) style of writing was quippy but sometimes felt like it was written as a series of funny (& borderline mean) tweets that were randomly compiled into a novel. Though I am queer, the novel felt like it was angled to a very specific demographic of privileged gay men which was a bit alienating.
All that considered, it was a good beach read. I really did laugh aloud many times, and I appreciated the calling out of ableism (internalized and generally) in the queer community. My favorite parts were when Elliott addressed his struggles with addiction, and how prevalent alcohol is in a society (maybe even esp. queer society) that views drinking multiple bottles of wine on a weeknight as normal behavior. Would love to discuss!