Release Day Review + Giveaway: What It Looks Like by Matthew J. Metzger

Posted August 20, 2016 by Laura

Blurb:

Eli Bell is the only son of a police chief inspector and a forensic scientist. He’s grown up wonky in a world that only deals with the straight and narrow — and his new boyfriend isn’t helping.

Rob Hawkes is six feet of muscle, tattoos, and arrest warrants. A career criminal and a former guest of Her Majesty’s Prison Service, he’d rather hit Eli’s parents than sit down to dinner with them. One wrong move, and Rob could destroy Eli — and his family — without a second thought.

But this isn’t what it looks like.

Rob’s not in control here — and Eli’s the one to blame.

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*I got and ARC of this book through Signal Boost Promotions*

If you’ve been following us, you might have noticed that I absolutely adored Matthew’s book Spy Stuff. So I had really high expectations when I picked this one, even though I knew it would be different. Unfortunately, this one didn’t wow me.

I liked the story well enough, and I can appreciate Matthew’s writing: it flows effortlessly, making the story quick and easy to read. So I’d like to point out that the issues I had mostly relate to my personal tastes, and not the quality of the book (and maybe I shouldn’t be pointing this out altogether since this is a personal review blog, but I’ll leave it here just in case).

As far as the story goes, I could have done with a fight less, to be honest. Eli and his parents discussing the same issue over and over again got a bit tiring after a while, and I just wanted bump all their heads together. I actually found some things to be a bit repetitive: the fights, the talks about Rob being a criminal, Eli defending him even when it was in his own head… Some of those things started grating on my nerves.

But what mostly prevented me for really enjoying this books where the characters. They were well constructed people and felt real, but I just couldn’t empathize with any of them. Eli came across as a bit selfish sometimes, or at least I thought so; and while I liked Rob standing up for him to his family, he was a character I just couldn’t understand. I also didn’t get to feel that connection between them, the I-love-you-s they exchanges felt like just words to me.

There’s also a bit of a BDSM theme here I just couldn’t wrap my mind around, but that one I’m sure is MY issue. I did like how they discussed safewords and everything was done for pleasuring them both, even the punishments. Some of the scenes just were a bit too dark for my taste.

So the finish line: while I didn’t enjoy this as much as I wanted to, I invite people to give it a chance, the writing alone deserves it.