[Books] Well-Endowed: The Making of a Gay Porn Star

A lot of times I worry if I'm being overly critical when I write some of these reviews. Am I expecting too much from certain things? Should I somehow grade on a curve of sorts that factors into other things like maybe the perceived intent to the author or something like that? And I wonder about all this since I get disappointed a lot of times when I venture into certain things - case in point being LGBT fiction.

Well-Endowed: The Making of a Gay Porn Star is an title that I had picked up via NetGalley. It was one of the few LGBT novels up for review and so eager for potential Geeky Guide content, I agreed to read it and write a review about the book.

I knew this was going to be a bit of a fluff piece going in and the book naturally isn't ground-breaking. But at the same time I sort of hoped for more of a story - erotica doesn't have to be shallow. But hey, you get a book that claims to be a fictional story of a porn star, then you'll get a book that plays out like an adult movie. And that means really light story and a heck of a heck of a lot of the porn stuff.

It goes without saying that this review is potentially NSFW. But at least I promise not to spoil things too much.

Synopsis: Well-Endowed: The Making of a Gay Porn Star is a gay erotica book by Donald Webb. The book was published by Bold Strokes Books and I got a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion of the work.

The story is told via first person perspective from Matt, our titular protagonist. It's not too clear why he's telling this story, but he starts from his earliest explorations of his sexuality and all the way into his career in the adult entertainment industry. Each chapter is practically a self-contained story of a particular moment in his life as things steadily move forward. And thus each chapter (complete with chapter title) is really centered around a sex scene from Matt's life that reads like any internet sex story you may have encountered over the years.

The start of the book had some degree of character development and we had some big build-up about his best friend Demsey and them having unspoken feelings for one another. But this was quickly abandoned as he goes off to college and from there the only really sense of continuity is derived from him sleeping with certain characters more than once.

So if we move away from this book's lack of an actual story, you might be arguing that at least the sex is hot or something. But if anything, the sex ends up feeling tired and repetitive soon enough. I've tried writing erotica a few times, and my biggest fear was the sexual habits of characters being too similar to one another. This book suffers from that issue significantly. Avoid the next paragraph if you're feeling a little sensitive or prudish.

In this book, all tops hide the fact that they enjoy bottoming. Sex scenes start with a blow job, move to rimming and eventually get to fucking. Everyone magically carries around lube and condoms all the time, And seriously, everyone loves rimming so much that one of the most common phrases in the book is "he has such an edible ass." It was amusing as a one-shot maybe but when every single chapter has a sex scene that follows essentially the same script, it gets really dull. And I don't think the author even tried to capture the real adult entertainment industry since for him, all sex scenes are practically one-shot deals with a small commercial break for putting on condoms. Heck, the only thing that the fluffer seems to do in this book is put on condoms and lube up the bottom. And one more thing - how often have you encountered a porn star who is a top and is limber enough for auto-fellatio given his eleven-inch dong?

Matt is the Mary Sue of gay adult entertainment industry.

The book is shallow and terribly redundant. It doesn't really feel like an actual person's life since almost anyone he meets is willing to have sex with him. Sure, this is somehow part of the premise since since the main character is convinced he should get into porn precisely because of the nearly-magical tendency of everyone to want to sleep with him. So maybe if you're bored you can read a chapter or two in isolation, but don't waste effort in reading this entire book as a single narrative and hope things make sense.

Well-Endowed: The Making of a Gay Porn Star is precisely what the title claims it to be and little else. The writing at least isn't entirely painful, but it's quite unimaginative. Thus I can only rate this as 2 ridiculous perfectly orchestrated sex scene moments out of a possible 5. How is this book $7.99?