Toeckey Jones

I loved Pan Horizons when I was a teenager, so when I found one in a charity shop I picked it up.

Good things:

This is a book with its heart in the right place. It wants to tell you that apartheid is bad. It wants to tell you not to judge people by the colour of their skin. It is sex positive - it has a female character who wants sex, and sex scenes where both the boy and the girl orgasm, and sex scenes that are a bit awkward but this isn't the end of the world.

Bad things.

I mean, I know the point is that the female protagonist is naive and prejudiced, and she is probably very well drawn, but gah, she is boring and annoying! And the romance is very much fancying-each-other-sexual-tension, they don't ever really get to know each other. Which I know is the point, but really. They never talk to each other about anything, and while some of it is explained by Dave hiding his dark secret, a lot of it is just that they're really awkward and easily upset and just don't talk or listen. And ok, some of the point of the book is that this is a problem, but I just ended up very frustrated at them. They are both far too quick to try and use other people to make the other jealous, and never manage to talk about what they actually want in a relationship, which OK, is partly because Dave is wrestling with hiding who he is, but basically their only interactions for most of the book are Snog or Pout, and it's just not that interesting. I can't tell if it is intentional, or just that I am now much older than the book's intended audience, but Dave's dark secret is signposted for the entire book (from the very title and tag line, I mean what is likely to be the problem for a young couple in apartheid south africa where the hot boy with the tan shaves his head all the time?) and by halfway through I was so ready for them to find out and have to deal with it. Instead, as soon as the secret is out, we get four pages of them being Sad and Doomed and Angry together, and that is it, she gets on with her life and never sees him again.… (meer)