Author: Charlie David
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Length: 200 Pages
Category: New Adult, Contemporary
At a Glance: Once again, Charlie David’s storytelling is wholly engaging, his prose flows along effortlessly, and his characters have their own unique way of endearing themselves to readers.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: At eighteen, Ashley seems to have everything: looks, talent, and even a girlfriend. What more could a young man want? Yet something is missing, and he has to come to terms with his sexuality and the possible implications for his career in the public eye. He begins dating Chris but isn’t sure he’s head over heels in love. It’s not the knight-in-shining-armor feeling he always imagined.
When Ashley is offered a big modeling job, he leaves his university in small-town Canada for a very different life in sunny Los Angeles, California. There he meets a slightly older man who makes him feel like he’s in a storybook romance. But is Ashley ready for real love, or is it just infatuation? The world is spread out before him, at once limitless and daunting, full of endless possibilities one moment and opportunities cut short the next.
Ashley floats between certainty and confusion as he tries to unravel new feelings, deal with past pain, and decide what he wants from life—and who he wants beside him during the journey.
1st Edition published by Palari Publishing LLP, 2009.
Review: Ashley, the narrator of Charlie David’s Boy Midflight, is a teenager on the cusp of limitless possibilities. Eighteen, gorgeous, and ready to fall in love, this story is his journey from boy- to adulthood, and an exploration of his sexuality—realizing that in spite of the fact he’s only dated girls, his truth is not heterosexual.
Ashley comes to the realization that he’s gay at a time in his life where the future is everything exciting, uncertain, and intimidating, and Charlie David captures the daunting realism of Ashley’s puzzle in the pieces of a young man who not only is just discovering who he is but is in the process of discovering there’s a vast difference between being in love and loving the idea of being in love, a concept that’s tested with two different guys who are each in a state of transition themselves.
Throughout the novel, Ashley’s self-actualization is at conflict with his desire to be in a relationship—in so many ways, he’s conflicted in his thoughts and actions, and I loved the stream-of-consciousness narrative he has with himself along the way, which was sometimes downright manic and often comical because of it. Ashley may have had every advantage in the looks department, but that wasn’t at all a free pass to romance for him, and he learned some valuable lessons about the difference between love and lust along the way. He’s trying to figure out what he wants, who he is, whom he wants, and where he wants to be—when life isn’t always about the easy answers, and the future is nothing if not full of questions. While the boy is indeed midflight, sometimes a little flighty, so much of Ashley’s charm lay in his pursuit of someone special to share his heart with, and…well…sometimes his libido took over for his better sense. And there’s that touch of teenage realism for you.
Once again, Charlie David’s storytelling is wholly engaging, his prose flows along effortlessly, and his characters have their own unique way of endearing themselves to readers. I may not have always been able to get behind Ashley’s actions or thought processes, but I adored him for his naïve optimism and the complete lack of guile which plays out so well against his age. It’s hard having zero control over the future, no matter your age, and that made him all the more loveable to me.
And, in the end, the fact that he found what he’d been searching for was satisfying in every way.
You can buy Boy Midflight here:
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