u/EchoAndroid

I just finished Common Goal for the second time, and I think I was kind of unfair to it the first time I read it.

I think it's still fundamentally a book about nothing. And by nothing I mean it's a book about two people getting way too into their own heads and waffling around for 200 pages. But the first time I led myself to believe that this book was just a massive annoying miscommunication drawn out over way too much time. And on the second read I think I allowed myself to be more empathetic to the reasons that neither of them would allow themselves to communicate.

Which softened me on the whole thing and allowed me to enjoy the character writing and dialogue, which is actually really strong. There are so many scenes and moments in this book that are incredibly funny. And I'd forgotten basically all of the details that tied it into the other books in the series.

I still think that Rachel is kind of bad at writing educated people, but I found myself less annoyed by that this time around too lol.

I've been re-reading Tough Guy recently, and I have to say that every time I get to the end I feel a mighty need to re-write the entire last quarter of the book.

The book has structural issues. It's too short, and doesn't give the conflict created in the third act time to breathe before ending abruptly. It's definitely not the only book in the series to have structural issues either. I think Common Goal is way worse, but somehow it's rated higher on average despite needing way more work to fix imo.

Regardless of these issues, I love Tough Guy. And the thing that I love about it most, and that makes it special to me out of all the other books in the series is that it's very gay. Like, culturally gay. All the other books contain gay characters sitting in a very heterosexual space, and this is the one book that actually intersects that world with things that are recognizably queer spaces.

It's not a particularly deep or complex portrayal, but I have to commend Rachel on building a microcosm that feels pretty relatable to me. I have friends that are like Fabian and his friends. Bargain brunch reminds me of so many queer little gatherings in my life. The spirit is there, and its pretty effective.

The other thing I like about it is Ryan. A lot of people say they find living in his head to be tiring, and to them I say. "Yes, yes it is. Now I have to get back to my CBT breathing exercise designed to make me stop thinking that my friends all hate me."

I get that it probably isn't sexy to many people, but as a large gay man with an anxiety disorder, it was really great to have that representation. It's probably why I will never be able to dislike this book even as it slams headfirst into its ending at mach 7.

Besides the structural issues, the one complaint I've seen more than any other about this book is that people hate Fabian.

And I'm like, why?

My thought is that people don't like what the book is saying about hockey. They don't like that Fabian is correct in his assessment that hockey is making Ryan miserable. And they think that part of the resolution to the story should have been Fabian getting over his prejudices and learning that he needed to support Ryan in his beloathed career. They don't like that this book that was billed as a hockey romance winds up mostly being an anti-hockey romance.

Through that lens, I think that it gets easy to see everything that Fabian does in the least charitable way possible. And I am begging those people to believe that Fabian is not taking himself as seriously as you think he is for the majority of this book. He is funny, and he is joking. We are not living in the world's most antagonistic Portlandia sketch, it's just gay millennials having brunch.

The complexity here, and where it all falls apart is that Rachel wrote both parts of the contradiction at the heart of the narrative to be partially true without giving them room to resolve separately. Hockey in the NHL is currently making Ryan miserable and he needs to leave and build something else that will make him happy, and Fabian needs to get over his prejudices enough to realize that he's being selfish and there is definitely a compromise they can build towards together.

The problem is that both of those resolutions happen at the same time, so you don't actually get to live in Fabian's desire to compromise for any amount of time before a complete capitulation immediately presents itself. I don't think this makes Fabian a bad person who learned nothing, but if you already didn't like him I can see how it would definitely feel like that. Especially since it's written so that Ryan apologizes first. I think the desire to resolve everything in the plot in a single chapter winds up making Fabian look kinda bad. There are lines that make you feel that there's been a change internally, but he doesn't get to actually demonstrate that change.

If I could change any small thing about the book, would be that Ryan shows up and apologizes first. Beyond that, structurally, I think the book needs two things: I'd add a new prologue describing their night on the ferry together. --I think that having the characters describe it is not nearly as effective for reminding people why they're together as just writing the damn scene at the beginning of the book.-- And I'd put the reconciliation and apology before the funeral, and add three more chapters of them trying to compromise with the Guardians around Ryan's health before the funeral makes Ryan realize that it can't work.

I genuinely think that those two changes would fix the whole thing minus some smaller framing problems, as long as you could get over the fact that it's a hockey book that hates the NHL.