SHAKESPEARE IN SOUTH FLORIDA, good story I feel is being misunderstood by not-targeted readers

SHAKESPEARE IN SOUTH FLORIDA
CHRISTOPH PAUL & CAROLINE MACON FLEISCHER
CLASH Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$5.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In this coming-of-age romantic comedy, a 17-year-old virgin film nerd, Joseph Caldo, who sees himself as a real-life art film, experiences first love, first sex, and first heartbreak in the surreal setting of South Florida while trying to make sense of Shakespeare’s stupid plays.

Caldo has no real social life, unless arguing about film online counts. Having seen so many films while struggling romantically, he has formed a theory that women pick romantic partners the way they pick which movie to watch. He’s definitely not a blockbuster, a rom com, or even a horror film, he’s more of an indie art film that is unfortunately funny. He worries he’ll never find the person who will accept and love him, the way that he accepts and loves his favorite obscure films.

That is until he meets Alexia at his grandmother's retirement home. Alexia was court-ordered to do volunteer work for her DUI but it's cool, Caldo has issues too, and it feels like they have a real connection. But there's also Valerie. The new girl at Caldo's awkwardly small school. She's a straight-A student who is attending on scholarship and is assigned the difficult task to mentor him in Shakespeare's plays. The two opposites have nothing in common except for being romantics who do nothing but fail at romance.

With first jobs that go very wrong, untimely food poisoning, and fake prom dates, Caldo unintentionally reenacts Shakespearian tropes in the heart of South Florida. Humor award-winning author, Christoph Paul, and Caroline Macon Fleischer's Shakespeare in South Florida is a quirky romantic comedy about being 17 and falling in love.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: "Unless you're rich, a model, athlete, or a cocaine dealer, South Florida is not as glamorous as people think. It's somewhere between Hell and Purgatory."

Word.

It could be just me, but a lot of people who've read this book and weren't thrilled by it seemed to me, as I was surveying the opinion landscape around the rewad, to be fundamentally off the mark in interpreting the read. Maybe it's me that's wrong, but what I saw in the very things the reader-response reviewers took issue with and exception to, was deliberate, calculated stylistic choices.

I myownself read this as Caldo's book, the way a seventeen-year-old would write a book with maybe some stuff that isn't necessarily *correct usage* but says what he needs to say. I can't say the typos were deliberate...I only possess a DRC not a finished copy...but it gave me the feeling I was right there, in that moment, with Caldo while he figures out what the hell all these feelings are by reaching for what he's been told are Humanity's most relatable romantic thoughts and expressions (Shakespeare) and mixing it up with the cultural zeitgeist-bearers he hears and his peers accept as authoritative on love (Billie Eilish).

Author Christoph's over thirty, so I've no authentic clue as to whether he got it right for the seventeen-year-olds I want to read this book; but I grew up being told Holden Caulfield spoke to my generation of boys, which he didn't, so I'll hold off on that conversation. I'm old enough to be Caldo's grandpa. I see what I think Author Christoph's tryig to do, and I approve, like my mother approved of what Salinger was trying to do in Catcher in the Rye. I saw how different the twenty years between Salinger's book and my reading of it had made the world, yet still *got* the story and liked it a lot. No such time-gap exists here, so I hope it will be even more intimately relatable.

In a slightly muddled way I'm trying to get across the fact that I think most who rated this story lower than my four stars did so out of a misreading of what was being done in the book. I saw the same words but from a different, more immediate and more personal angle, framed by authorial intent to speak to an audience that only peripherally includes me.

If I had a late-adolescent grandson I'd give him this book. I think we'd have a grand time reading it and talking about it.

It's not a costly ebook, so maybe read a sample through my proffered lens and see if you don't put it on your ereader for real.

OCTOBER'S OCEAN, charming romantic YA story with a strong young gay lead

OCTOBER'S OCEAN
DELAINE COPPOCK
Tuxtails Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Halloween on Jute Island is like a walking, talking costume parade. That's probably why Seth didn't notice her at first.

The old black dress, wild hair and accent didn't exactly stand out in October. But there is something about Peggy that draws Seth in. He hadn't felt anything but empty since Colin died, but suddenly he feels curious. And who is this new boy in town with ocean eyes that Seth can't look away from?

As the waves of loss threaten to pull Seth under, his love of music and his new friends might just lead him back to shore.

The Summer I Turned Pretty meets Outlander in this beautiful story of teenage love, loss and friendship.

I RECEIVED THIS AS A GIFT. THANK YOU.

My Review: I think older people are either oblivious to, or too uncomfortable to deal with, the gigantic crisis of grief young men are going through. Our in/actions have landed these culturally disadvantaged people in the midst of a life-threatening lacuna in an already thin mental-health safety net for their group. Seth is grieving his lost Colin, and he's male, so doubly not encouraged to discuss this raw, ravaging grief.

I don't think the gay youth suicide epidemic goes unnoticed anymore, but I do think its precursor states like depression and loss go vastly undertreated. If you are, or are aware of, a young person in emotional need, The Trevor Project (link above) is a resource to tap as soon as possible. Doing nothing, not acknowledging the problem or thinking it could just go away, is not a wise choice of coping mechanism. Please reach out, for yourself or to learn more about how you can extend help to your own life's Seth. The rewards are real for those who take action and so are the risks for those who don't.

The story told here is one of gaining perspective and using it to forge a new relationship to life and living with loss. I am a sour old man, well past the perspectiveless, trackless desert that is queer adolescence, so read this story as definite outsider. I was so moved. I was so happy to feel the force of Author Coppock's story. If *I* get it, feel it, am charmed by it, I can see how and understand why a gay young man in a vulnerable state would find it very comforting. We do well to comfort before we make demands of these young men...they get so little of it. The lifelong consequences are more or less invisible, it seems to me at least, and we as adults should make more and better efforts to change this.

Start small. Give this charming story to the queer lad in your orbit.

I learned of this book from its agent/editor, Erik McManus, via his YouTube channel. I'm very glad that I did because I got to enjoy a charming slightly-supernatural romantic story to fill my spooky-season reading card, and found a story that I feel is rooted in an emotional reality underacknowledged in queer culture.