Closer, in many ways, feels like a noir tale unfolding the lives of star-crossed lovers entangled in a twisted ménage à quatre. This romance is set against a richly described backdrop – the soul of the drought besieged Southern California desert unpacks the love and lust, rage and fear, pain, and betrayal of an affair as it rips through human experience like a surgeon with a scalpel. This story weaves a tale of an affair wrapped up in the heartbreak of pursuing true love at any cost, forcing us to ask, what is the higher calling, true love, or family? Follow the narrator on a journey of self-discovery through a crumbling marriage, a torrid love affair, and the sudden surprise ending that leaves the reader with a new sort of happily-ever-after.
Goodreads | Barnes & Noble | Olympia
Thank you to Olympia for the review copy of Closer ❤
so….
i actually had a lot to say about this that i didn’t know what to say anymore.
i feel bad for saying this but when i started reading it, i felt the cringeness crippling over me lol. this was by no means the cringe of the ‘romantics’ or ‘togetherness’ but flatly just by reading it. i guess that’s a sign it’s not good? well…
the author is a huge blabber i’ve had in a while & mind you, he blabber a LOT that it drags the story altogether – not that it’s interesting enough ~ like, when he talked about south californians, he talked a big chunk of descriptions. man, i kinda don’t care honestly…
i think this book should be put under erotica instead of just ‘Fiction (Contemporary)’. i know it’s romance but uhhhh i really did not expect a story like this at all. scenes were a lot between the ‘true lovers’ *cries in the corner* i’m just going to be honest and say i actually skimmed a lot through the explicit scenes because i couldn’t take it. i was overwhelmed.
but hey, one thing i really enjoyed was the short chapters. it made me read very fast that i didn’t noticed i got halfway through the book. but of course, through the pain of self-dedication because boy, this wasn’t easy at all. the beginning was already quite a lot to take in. plus, there was also the mention of “her tiny breasts” or “her small tits” and also “her tiny pointed tits”. i’m not sure if he’s being condescending or just proud of himself to take in/accepting flat-chested woman *screams male egooo* idk really, but both do not sound very appealing to state that many times throughout the book that it had become my habit to mark those mentions. this is 2023, should’ve left that in 2015. very unnecessary.
this story is actually more than just lust & lovemaking – or so i believed because that alone almost took 50% of this book – but it’s actually heartbreaking that the narrator & his lover were dealing with their crumbling marriages. the narrator, dealt with his sudden change in relationship with his wife, elle, which he still don’t know why or what had made them be that way. elle had pitiful backstory; she grew up in an emotionally detached family. the narrator tried everything to rekindle their relationship but elle preferred to think what they’re dealing was just a rough patch in a marriage and they’re not struggling and that they’re just going through what normal couples are going through. the husband wanted more romance and sex but the wife is kind of dealing that she’s asexual so she couldn’t fulfill his needs. it was all so contradictory between them. it’s like they didn’t understand each other fully.
the narrator’s lover/affair kat, with her reserved husband, mike, keeping everything to himself that she felt lack of love, affection & anything that a husband should provide to a wife in terms of desires. kat tried so hard to make mike look at her, to want her but all went to vain. honestly, i’m also very mad at mike for being like that. why couldn’t you just bond with your wife?!! not just that, he’s also very controlling of kat – of her actions, her way of dressing, just everything and playing favoritism with their children because the child needs special needs. from here, i understand why kat felt what she felt and went to the narrator to satisfy her. you see, i do not glorify infidelity or cheating but this. a husband like mike usually what make the wives go away – at least from what i’ve seen on the local news and once again, movies. you need to appreciate your significant other and make them feel. if you can’t, then talk about it. communicate.
also this is just my personal thoughts – i think the author is better suited to write poetry books because some poems he shared & wrote in this, at least for me, were actually nice. i don’t really read poem that much but i kind of understand the sentiment the author is aiming on. it’s there but it’s not pulled fully at the roots. or, he should dive in more to dark romance genre but please, not the infidelity theme again… (and here, people will scream at me “don’t tell me what to do!”).
overall, this book wasn’t the best for me. however, i do found some things that i like such as the chapter Pattern Recognition. it told the backstory of Kat. that was heartbreaking to me and kind of hitting? girl needs more love honestly.
“She was so used to feeling low and unseen that she internalized her rejection as silence when in reality she unintentionally gas-lit. She said the words, but the others weren’t capable of hearing what was contrary to what they would have wanted for themselves.”
“I don’t want too much, I want less. I don’t want a huge house or money. I want to be seen, to have fun, dance, laugh, be silly, and dance some more. I want to have my simple needs met, anticipated.”
i also want to add that after finishing this book, what caught my attention is the nature of gender / gender role in here. i’m not sure how to deliver this in the most sensical way but from this story, we can see that kat was torn between choosing her true love or her family. she wanted out, she wanted to be happy with her true love but didn’t want to leave her young daughters. she was confused, scared and dejected. while the narrator, although it was hard for him to come clean to his family about the affair, was not worried about this; about his children.
maybe he did a bit but not as much as kat did that she was feeling torn between the choices she had. in most cases, it’s not easy for mothers to just leave their children but fathers seem to always make it easy. i felt somehow angry at the narrator for this. it’s easy for you because you’re a man but it isn’t easy for a woman, a mother who gave birth to her own children just to leave like that. i felt that the narrator didn’t want to understand this deeply and was quite selfish. butttt i do know both of them were at fault for the things they did. both of them were wrong.
by the way, the blurb mentioned ‘menage a quatre’ so i thought there would be a foursome LMAOOOO i was quite scared there would be inappropriate action through this book but thank goodness there wasn’t lololol.
to conclude, before i end this i just want to say:
i don’t know about you or the rest of the human population in this world, but there is no justifying the act of cheating. if you cheat, then you cheat. there are many shows and movies where partners cheated because they no longer feel the connection or joy with their current partners so they find someone else for that while still hanging on the last thread of their relationship. i admit some of them were reasonable but most of them? not. reasonable i say? well, i did watched/read some messed up stories about abusive relationship where they cheated to get out of the relationship but i think that’s another different story. right…?
RATING: ★★
Thank you for reading! ♡
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