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Strings Attached |  | Author: Nick Nolan
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $12.99
Buy Used: $5.99
as of 3/11/2010 23:37 CST details
You Save: $7.00 (54%)
Seller: dbz123
Rating:  reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: First Printing
Pages: 312
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 1419628895
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781419628894
ASIN: 1419628895
Publication Date: June 12, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
From BOOKS TO WATCH OUT FOR by RICHARD LABONTE, Volume 4 number 1 - Adolescence is a hazardous way of life for 17-year-old Jeremy Tyler; his father died in a mysterious accident when he was a child, and his mother has since descended into alcoholic hell and forced rehab; that's when he's sent from the Fresno slums of his childhood to the posh estate of his overbearing great aunt Katherine and her censorious husband - liberated from an economic prison, only to land in an emotional one - and is overwhelmed by the change. It's not easy for him to fit into the upper crust, particularly because he's trying to hide how much he's attracted to other boys. Jeremy's story of breaking free from the strands of dishonesty, deceit, and self-doubt has its parallels to the tale of Pinocchio, but Nolan's queer take is totally contemporary: think the TV series The OC - girls with mean cheekbones, well-built guys with snotty attitudes, and Jeremy in the role of a queer Ryan Atwood. He's a good-looking kid, with a sleek swimmer's physique - and the swim team's champ is out to get him. He dates one of the smart-set girls in an attempt to keep his gay hormones at bay - but that doesn't do him much good. Nolan's debut novel is a kitchen sink of genres - coming of age, coming out, mystery, romance, erotica, even a dash of the supernatural - that add up to an impressive story about the passage from boyhood to manhood.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Strings Attached March 10, 2010
Heidi (Maryland, United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
In Nick Nolan's Strings Attached, Jeremy, a seventeen year-old boy is uprooted from his destitute life when his mother is entered into an extended rehab program for her alcoholism. He ends up living with his affluent great aunt Katherine, her conniving husband and their butler. He begins to blend in with the rich kids at his new high school and even gets a coveted spot on the swim team, following in his father's footsteps. The rest of the story is part coming out/coming of age and part mystery novel.
While I enjoyed this book, I was wondering as I read it who the target audience was. I initially thought was intended for young adults. I was shocked then, to read some of the scenes describing sex and masturbation. I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, and I wasn't offended by them (they are honestly not all THAT graphic), but I didn't expect that sort of thing in a YA read. Come to find out at the end in the Author's Notes that it was initially a YA novel turned adult because of those very same passages I was confused by. It seems to me like the book would have been better as a YA novel and more delicate handling of the sexual aspect.
Regardless, I thought this was a fairly good read and a decent first attempt, and will keep an eye out for Nick Nolan's works in the future.
Had Potential, But Missed the Mark February 25, 2010
Heather D. Gallay (Boston, MA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nick Nolan's STRINGS ATTACHED reads, at first, much like the television show The O.C., with its poor-boy-moves-in-with-rich-benefactors theme that takes place in on the rich Californian coast. Add to that a male protagonist who is struggling with his burgeoning sexual identity, and Nolan had what could've been an interesting social piece. Unfortunately, he didn't leave well-enough alone, and, chose, instead, to fold in a weak mystery that doesn't gain much steam until the final quarter of the book -- and then falls completely flat. Ultimately, the book felt chaotic and sloppy, which was sad since it began with so much promise.
I wasn't crazy about Nolan's fairly two-dimensional characters, although they were likeable enough, in general. The antagonist, however, was cartoonish and formulaic, and had no real heft to him. The dialog was somewhat melodramatic and occasionally out-of-date (at one point, a teenage girl calls her boyfriend "a big, stupid ding-dong"), and there was too much exposition and too little actual action. Nolan forgot the golden rule of writing: show, don't tell. And key elements were often introduced and then dropped, such as a significant incident between male lead Jeremy and his friend/crush, Coby, that went absolutely nowhere.
Still, there were some redeeming qualities to the book. It was an easy read, and if the characters weren't particularly fascinating, neither were they offensive. I think it suffers most because Nolan tried to make it too many things at once: the coming-of-age tale of a gay teen, a murder mystery and strange re-telling of PINOCCHIO. On top of all that were themes of drug abuse, neglectful parenting and parentified children. It was simply too much for this author to handle.
Would I suggest reading STRINGS ATTACHED? Sure. It's something moderately entertaining to do. But I would definitely recommend borrowing it from the library over purchasing it.
 Gay teen romance grows up February 15, 2010
Kristin J. Johnson (Palm Desert, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I won't spoil the plot of this delicious soap-opera coming-of-age novel. The author writes that he originally intended to write a "gay teen romance novel" before the content became too adult. Probably just as well, because then we adults would have missed this story that is at times snarky, at times soulful, erotic and somehow innocent in a strange way--in short, a comte de fees.
Jeremy, as the hero, thinks he is white trash, until his mother is forced into rehab--again--and Jeremy is transported to Ballena Beach, a stand-in for Malibu or "Beverly Hills 90210," replete with exotic women and bisexual teen boys. His aunt Katharine Tyler, who gets the Geppetto role in this story patterned after the 1940 Disney Pinocchio Pinocchio (Two-Disc 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition) and the original Carlo Collodi book Pinocchio (Puffin Classics) (and sharing the sensibilities of the 1972 Italian film version), reminds one of Lady Bracknell in a way. For that matter, Jeremy's alcoholic and somehow tragic mother Tiffany is the spiritual sister of Mary Jones in the novel Push Push: A Novel, which spawned the movie Precious Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire.
The writing is unabashedly passionate, outrageous and page-turning. Modeling the novel on Pinocchio, but not doing it too over-the-top, and acknowledging the pain a double life gives to everyone, is a brillaint move that makes this stand out from similar books.
 Great first novel! February 13, 2010
G. Schneider (VA United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'll start off by saying this is an enjoyable book, populated by an interesting and diverse cast of characters. Some are fully developed, others sketched in, others you wish had more to do with the plot...or at least you'd like to get to know them better.
The story concerns a 17-year-old son of a single parent, a mother who is painted as a pathetic and totally useless drunk but who, through the miracle of an author's whim, is magically transformed by the end of the book into a wonderful if tragic woman. Early on she is committed to a nursing care facility and the boy is put in the foster care of his great aunt and her husband. The great aunt is painted as the Hope for the Future, as far as the boy is concerned. The author would also want us to think her husband is wonderful, too...but that doesn't last too long before we see he has an agenda of his own as far as the boy is concerned. (Actually, they both have an agenda for the boy, and both for somewhat selfish reasons; but hers is the more laudable.)
Along for the ride are some delightful characters -- a manservant who is openly gay but doesn't take advantage of the boy (in itself a refreshing change from too many books with similar characters); a best friend named Carlo (short for Carlos), a Mexican very-much-out gay boy who doesn't hide his attraction to our hero. There are also some less-delightful characters, such as the school jock who has kids of both genders falling all over him...and he knows it; two rather bitchy girls who diss everyone in sight, including each other, but whom the author wants us to like anyway. (I didn't.)
Some elements of the story are glossed over either because they're not important or because the author simply didn't bother dealing with them. In the beginning, this is one long narrative, with each succeeding chapter picking up literally where the previous one left off. Eventually the author discovers that he can skip days where nothing happens, to the point where there are gaps in the story...which wouldn't be so noticeable if that had been his narrative style all along. As it is, it's somewhat jarring. (A case in point: the boy magically has learned how to drive and has obtained his license. However long it took whoever to teach him is conveniently ignored. It isn't necessary for us to witness this progress, but in the style of the earlier part of the book, we would have gone with him when he took his test!)
One refreshing thing is that sex, while thought about and talked about (since these are, after all, teenagers and the target audience, after all, presumably wants to read about it), nothing very much happens, and what does happen isn't dwelt upon in lascivious detail.
Fortunately (because we do care about the hero) things work out in the end.
After that end, unfortunately, we are treated to a rather lengthy afterword by the author, who tries to convince us that the whole thing was a reworking of the Pinocchio story. But I got the feeling that he'd written the book first, and then someone went and told him, "Hey, you know, this is almost like Pinocchio in some ways." So the author then went back and overlaid some Pinocchio-inspired details and tried to convince us that that was what he had in mind all along. Personally, I don't care. If it makes him happy to think that's what he used as his inspiration, fine. What counts is the believability of the characters and the depiction of them in such a way that we care what they do and what is done to them. In that, the author succeeded. Would I read subsequent books by him? Yes, I would. Do I recommend this one? Yes, I do.
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