You Know Me As Lad

Holy. Hell!

This book messed me up and I loved every perverted, dark, twisted, inappropriate minute of it. Every minute. There is not one thing about this book that I hated and I don't know what the hell that says about me. Ha! Chance Assassin had everything I love, the dark and twisted world with a sweet love story floating around in the murkiness. And this is not two sweet guys in a dark world. This was two screwed up characters in a screwed up world, doing absolutely FUCKED UP things.

It's so hard for me to know how much to say about this book because part of the joy (?) of it is that just when you think things can't get any more messed up...they do. I would hate to say something that would ruin those delicious "Oooohhhh shit! moments for anyone.

Vincent is a 16 year old boy who's just been stabbed doing a job for Charlie. Charlie's old, allegedly a doctor, and a totally perverted creep. Vincent is coming from something much worse than Charlie though, so When Charlie sends Vincent on a job it seems like a gift. Vincent gets stabbed though and we meet him as he's stumbling in the snow toward Charlie's hotel room. Charlie is not the one who opens the door. A tall, dark, and deadly looking stranger does, and that's how this morbid love story begins.

Frank is an assassin and the one to open the door for Vincent. While Vincent (our narrator) talks almost endlessly, is full of lippy comments, and is a beautiful twink of the highest degree, Frank is the opposite. He's quiet, intense, and the strangest mix of passiveness and deadliness. He's also 32 to Vincent's 16. Vincent, however, doesn't care and knows right from the beginning that Frank is meant to be his. Vincent is aggressive when it comes to sex but it's not just sex that he wants from Frank. He wants ALL of Frank.

I should not have been rooting for this relationship. Vincent is 16 and Frank is 32. It is so, so wrong but every time I tried to remind myself of that the chemistry between Vincent and Frank just blew me away. Their interactions and the way they play off of each other is brilliant. I haven't read a M/M where the MCs had better chemistry. It was so strong that it made me forget that Vincent was a minor, not because Vincent didn't come across as a teenager because he did, but because I just knew these two were two halves of a whole. The way I rooted for Vincent and Frank totally fucked with my brain. I couldn't stop myself though.

And then we have the fact that Frank kills people. A lot of people. For money. Frank also has no remorse and at no point in the book does he show remorse. He takes pleasure in what he does and eventually so does Vincent. I should have been appalled because this book doesn't shy away from the death and ugliness. Instead, at more than one point in the story, I found myself laughing while Frank and Vincent ended someone's life. I don't know how the author managed to do that; to horrify me and amuse me at the same time. It wasn't just the character's actions that threw me for a loop, it was also my reactions to those actions. What would have been horrible and stomach turning in another novel was somehow funny and, dare I say it, sweet in this one. It boggled my mind.

There is so much more I want to say about this book, and so much character and plot analyzing that I want to do. So much but I won't because I don't want to ruin it. Just read it. It's fucked up, horrible, sweet, twisted, dark, intense, funny, inappropriate, and absolutely fucking amazing. Read it.