My Roommate’s a Jock? Well, Crap! by Wade Kelly

Title: My Roommate’s a Jock? Well, Crap!
Author: Wade Kelly
Publisher: Dreamspinner
Length: 83,758 words
Genre: m/m Contemporary Romance
Heat: 3 – Sexy & Mild
Sex Frequency: 2 – Few and Far Between
Keywords/Tags: Jocks/Athletes, Nerds/Geeks, Homophobia, Coming Out, OFY, Soccer, College, Roommates
Rating: Pretty Good

BLURB

It’s easy to become cynical when life never goes your way.



Cole Reid has been a social recluse since he was fifteen, when he was outed by his high school baseball team. Since then, his obsessive-compulsive behavior and sarcastic nature have driven away most of the population, and everyone else hates him because he’s gay. As he sees it, he’s bound to repulse any prospective friends, let alone boyfriends, so why bother?



By the time Cole enters college, he’s become an anal-retentive loner—but it’s not a problem until his roommate graduates and the housing department assigns Ellis Montgomery to move in with Cole. Ellis is messy, gorgeous, straight, and worst of all, a jock!


During a school year filled with frat buddies, camping expeditions, and meddling parents, Cole and Ellis develop a friendship that turns Cole’s glass-half-empty outlook on its head. There must be more to Ellis than a fun-loving jock—and maybe Cole’s reawakening libido has rekindled his hope for more than camaraderie.

REVIEW

This is the first book I’ve read by Wade Kelly, even though I’ve been shamefully putting off reading his earlier book that scares me, When Love is Not Enough (a Bittersweet book). So I’m not quite familiar with Wade’s writing. I will say though, that I think this is one of those books that gets wildly different reactions from reader to individual reader, and whether that’s indicative of his whole body of work, I’m not quite sure. So this review is more subjective than most. I do think, or at least guess anyway, that if you were going to try out this author’s style (and other readers can tell me if I’m wrong and they’re incredibly different) that you should go with this book simply because it is lighter in tone and I assume because of that has/will find a much wider reader base.

Playing on the ever popular trope of jocks and nerds, MRJWC introduces us to two characters with quite a few neuroses. On the outside, Cole fits the stereotype and his are blatant. He’s OCD, can barely socialize and has made very few friends, and is well, prickly. After Cole’s best friend and roommate graduates college and moves to live with his girlfriend, Cole is forced to accept a new roommate in the apartment he rents in college. He knows there’s almost no chance of finding someone he got along with as well as his last roommate, which is why he fights the housing Dean’s decision as much as possible. He does what he can, however, which is plead with the man not to assign him a jock. That’s the one thing he won’t be able to take.

He knows he’s doomed from the moment his new roommate (who is HOT) shows up with a pack of straight men who roll around on the floor like puppies. They’re on the soccer team, and it looks like the dean has ignored Cole’s wishes. But, was it for his own good? Ellis isn’t the dumb jock that Cole had assumed and is even harboring a few choice secrets of his own that might make them compatible in ways Cole has never found before.

My Roommate is a Jock? Well, Crap! is certainly a less than conventional title but I think that it gives a clue to the reader right off about the author and the book. It’s a quirky title that suits Cole and I think also suits the author. I could be totally wrong about this, and I apologize in advance if I am, but by reading this book alone it seemed to me that Wade Kelly is an author who makes choices in a different way than is conventional. Of course, how readers respond to that is always different, but there are many authors who I could think of that have a stylized voice (Mary Calmes is one of those), whether it changes from book to book or not. I’ve noticed that many reviews and readers have also commented that they didn’t understand certain aspects of the story, or choices in the story. I could see that a few times. The POV changes are a stickler for some people, but without any hard and fast rules myself, I did find the addition of minor character’s POV somewhat disengaging. The writing seemed edgy to me at times. That might not be the right adjective, I’m not sure. It reminded me of reading fanfiction or self published works where there wasn’t a point for an editor to get in there and dull the sharp edges. To someone like me who reads so much m/m published by a handful of select e-publishers, that’s refreshing and often why I like to read online fiction. All of this came together for me as a book written by an author who seemed to make choices based less on the overall big picture and more on specific issues — the characters, the style, personal preferences, etc etc etc.

Take from that what you will. I’m not sure I got across what I was trying to say, but it was an elusive feeling I was trying to capture.

I suppose that overall and after finishing I had a few problems with the book, but as I was reading it I enjoyed it. Whether you will or not depends on whether you can get behind the characters and the style. I think most readers will, and from what I can see they are so far. I didn’t love it, but I did like it and I enjoyed the chance to sample Wade’s writing without reading his Bittersweet novel first