Pride continueth with the book which (I thought) closed out my Goodreads reading challenge (as it were, Goodreads did its thing and thought I’d read something twice).
So herein is a genre, I feel: the soft shy (gay) man under the heel of The Man falls for the calm aloof quirky gay man who is being investigated by The Man. I felt so very many shades of The House in the Cerulean Sea while reading this, although I did have to double check to make sure that this wasn’t a queer-bait-y book.
I think this book is confusing, and I’m not sure I truly understand where the relationship between these two men comes from. It feels like a friendship, and then suddenly there’s a kiss, and then they seem to never speak of it again. Do I hold it against it? No, as I have noted before I am an unrepentant shipper and will ship any two characters with sentience if the plot has space for it.
And yes, this plot has a LOT of space, because most of it is beyond confusing. Keita has this dual nature of scheming plot-er and utterly befuzzled confused, and in some sense I think he stands in for the reader as well? I sometimes got what was happening and sometimes did not. At all? But the overall mood was so on point that I was happy to go along for the ride. I’m not sure I’ll be reading up on the next installments in the series though.