Review: The Vincent Boys by Abbi Glines

Sex. Romance. Love triangles. The pastor's daughter gone bad.

The Vincent Boys either has a lot going for it, or is a huge pile of cliches depending on who you talk to and what your perspective is on the matter. This would have to be the first young adult novel I've ever read where the sweet, pastor's daughter ends up getting cunnilingus in her boyfriend's car (in fact, it's the first young adult novel I've read that features cunnilingus at all,) and I suspect that much of the novel's popularity has to do with the same elements that make the novel kind of annoying. The fact is, this book is sexually explicit for a young adult novel. It is also contains a love triangle that is as interesting as it is cliched. Sweet, Pastor's daughter Ashton is alone for the summer as her boyfriend, the perfect and popular Sawyer is away on a mountain trip. Chance leads Ashton to encountering Sawyer's cousin, the trailer dwelling bad boy Beau. Until she hit puberty, Ashton was friends with both boys, often playing dumb pranks with Beau, but her relationship with Sawyer changed all that. Now, with Beau gone, Ashton feels the bad girl in her coming to the surface.

And that's really it. We see the beginnings of Ashton and Beau's affair, the development of their sexual relationship, Sawyer's return, the all mighty fallout when Ashton and Beau's affair is discovered and the eventually resolution. And woven through the story is the dilemma of choosing happiness over duty.

What this novel does have in abundance is likeable characters (even if the choices they make aren't always the best,) and a brilliant depiction of life in Alabama. I did think that there was a real sexist undercurrent through the book and that some things, such as Beau's temper and his tendency to solve problems using his fists, should have been dealt with instead of being treated as if it were cute and quirky because he was "protecting" Ashton. But for reasons that I cannot understand, books of this type always seem to gloss over issues of anger management and treat jealousy and possessiveness as if it were a good thing, instead of a massive red flag that one is headed toward an abusive relationship. Or maybe this is dealt with in the sequel?

Or perhaps I'm just a grumpy old book critic. Anyway, this one isn't a bad read, though I suspect it will appeal more to the group of twenty and thirty-somethings who still read young adult novels rather that its intended audience. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more