“The only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions.” – Unknown
Alex Strauss thinks he knows his college roommate, Shannon Murray, pretty well. For instance, he knows for a fact that Shannon’s straight. Poor Alex got some rather unfortunate visual evidence of that. Alex also knows that it’s not totally unheard of for straight guys to want to experiment a little. In fact, Alex has been on the receiving end of a few of those straight boy experiments himself and has always regretted it afterwards. He’s done playing guinea pig for the bi-flexible and the het-curious, is done being used and then treated like dirt, so even if Shannon was all about it, it wouldn’t happen. Probably. Maybe. All that conviction hasn’t stopped Alex from falling a little bit in love with Shannon, though. Poor guy.
In a dark and dangerous forest that feels a little bit like a trippy fall down the rabbit hole to Chunderland, where things don’t necessarily go bump in the night as much as they go splat on the windshield, Alex, Shannon, and Riley O’Leary take a shortcut to Dudleytown that ends up a bit of a bloody, vomitous mess and makes them a target for an escaped convict. Riley’s gone missing and it’s up to Alex and Shannon to find and rescue him. If, that is, Alex can quit jumping to conclusions long enough to read the signals Shannon’s sending him and just go along with the fact that everyone’s got his own way of being who he is.
This was a fast paced and fun story about two guys playing for the same team who had to learn to trust they were following the same playbook. I knew L.B. Gregg could make me laugh. Apparently, I now also know she can make me laugh and give me the heebie jeebies at the same time. Dudleytown reads like the best icky parts of a horror movie without all the “what an idiot, don’t go in there!” stuff that normally goes along with them. Maybe there’s a little bit of sex at the oddest moment, but at least no one gets murdered with his pants down around his ankles.
Buy Dudleytown HERE.