RIDE

I cannot say enough about this book. This author has a way with her descriptions and dialogues that makes the characters so multidimensional that you can't help but get INVOLVED with them. You root for them, wanna beat up antagonistic characters for them (Ooh that one judge!!), and you want them to be happy. I like my books to be engaging but not too heavy and this fits the bill. The authors sense of humor also comes out in this book- her wittiness makes me want to steal some lines and use them as my own lol. Also Benny and Kit are the cutest (and hottest) couple! Their dynamic relationship playing out over the pages is perfect. And Benny's nickname for Kit? I won't spoil it but I am still cooing over the cuteness.Overall, this is just a really sweet and worthwhile read. I've actually read everything by this author and have basically been waiting for more after I found her first book 'Something Real' and then her second 'August Nights'. Author--if you read this, keep them coming!!!

The book follows the start of the career of Bentley Williams in the world of profesional BMX following his father footsteps - a freestyle pioneer - from his life as star player in the UCLA team, trough hitting rock bottom until the heights of professional success.Bentley spends much of his young life pursuing relationships with women, before he recognizes his desire for Kit – a freshman student from Ohio - and acknowledges their friendship as something more. The complexity of the main characters’ relationships, pursuing the future he’s always dreamed of, to sexual identity is one way Nellie elevates the character from mere “window dressing”, to a well written and developed characters that you can’t help but forget that it all started as fanfiction.Just as Nellie’s characters challenge conventional categories of sexual identity, RIDE never avoids the familiar narratives of gay fiction. She approaches the collective traumas that have so deeply shaped modern gay identity — bullying and discrimination — obliquely, touching the conventions of the coming-out narrative.Her characters suffer anxiety about the public reception of their sexual identities — They will be tormented by pursuing a relationship with a closeted guy, being outed by the media, dealing with the no-label-label, and realizing their own sexuality. The novel centers on Bentley, when he arrives at an underground BMX competition with only a backpack and no bike. Homeless and horribly scarred that he’s taking the wrong path, he’s profoundly aware of his new life. The book slowly discloses episodes from his life as a college drop out homeless kid, trying to persue his dream and honor his father, against his mother and exgirlfriend beliefs. “I love BMX. If I’m not doing what I love, then I’m not living” he says. Everything changes when unexpectedly Kit Edwards appears in Benny’s life.Sometimes young queer suffering is at the heart of RIDE, the recents events in Kit’s life are an extreme iteration of being out and proud in a little community, the experience of many queer young people. Even as he changes his environment, Kits’s sense of the logic of his life never changes. His self-loathing is shocking from the start, and only grows more abject: he is “a no one,” “naive”, “poor excuse of a guy”, even “crossed out as a disgusting predator.” After all that, he believes he will never be able to able to enjoy emotional intimacy, even as he craves to find it.Both Kit and Bentley endure other aspects of their lives — each one pursue their dreams, each one is brilliant, each one becomes not just successful but famous. The book is scaled to not only the intensity of Bentley’s inner life, but also the life of the people around him and for long passages it forces the reader to experience a world that’s brutally warped by prejudice and fear. Again and again RIDE conveys Bentley’s sense of himself through an elaborate metaphor: Success is big; failure is small, Success is moving forward; failure is static or stumbling. He’s doing something he’s passionate about instead of something the rest of the world want him to do. “Wanting something badly even though it could hurt you,“ Bentley repeated. "That’s what love is, huh?”The book also reminds readers of the long filiation between gay art and gay life — those aspects we’ve been encouraged to forget in an era that’s increasingly embracing gay marriage and homonormativity. This is not a register of feeling or expression readers are accustomed to in American literary fiction. Combined with the novel’s emotional extremity and the tightness of its focus on Bentley’s d decisions, the structure and use of modern aspects of communication such as social media produces a feeling of immersion that’s almost unprecedented.Nellie also defends friendship as a primary relationship, as central as marriage to the making of lives and communities. “I just want you to know that despite what happens, I’m proud of you. We all are. And, I think you are amazing, even if you’re a crazy man who breaks into buildings” Kit says early in the novel. For Bentley, the people around him had imagined his life for him, but Kit had allowed him to believe in possibilities that he would never have conceived. Their relationships with one another challenge categorization.It might have been mawkish and just a game, Kit thinks about his feeling for the rider, but it’s also true. This is the claim that animates RIDE: that by challenging the canons of current literary taste, by embracing drama and exaggeration with a touch of comedy and sentiment, it can access emotional truths.

Just reading this book makes you reach for your hair as the words whiz past your ears and the tire bumps rattle them around inside your head. This will make a great audiobook, but it is worth reading for the love of life, bicycles, and between Kit and Bentley. This book has characters that ARE real, not just want to bes.Even minor characters perform major functions in developing other characters and situations so that the love theme can entangle everyone as BMX riding replaces football for Bentley and Bentley riding replaces Kit's growing up gay pains, A perfect blend of love and respect has it's difficulties in development, but as serendipity blends love of life and each other into the fulfilled magic they find together through fashioning their love together while enjoying the thrill of BMXoXoXo forever.

When I think I can't love Nellie and her stories more, she decides to write this masterpiece and all I can do is sit down and face the fact that yes, apparently I can.As Ride n1 Stan all I can say is that I am beyond proud of this story, the author, the characters and the love you can feel in every page you read. I cried, I laughed, I got anxious and stressed, but above everything I loved every second of this ride (pun intended).Thank you for writing something as special as this story, thank you for sharing your talent with the world, and really, thank you for everything.Everyone should read this one, fall in love with Bentley and Kit (Mikey too, to be honest), and just have a good time because even if I did get emotional once or twice, this was such a joy and light story to read and it made me happy beyond words.Congratulations again on the masterpiece, your brilliant mind and your talent with the words surprised me once again. You deserve the world. <3

I have always enjoyed this author. This book did not disappoint. Such a cute story and enjoyable to read. Can't to see what she writes next.

Loved every page!