To say that I did not like this book would be an understatement. But first, let me be clear on a few things. For this book I decided to break down how I rated this book based on content, likeability, editing and writing.I would have thought that with a book like this that made such headlines on the freaking Oprah show would have been better written. The writing for me - though it was a fast read - felt jumbled and paragraphs and sections seemed to be out of place. So essentially the writing and the editing went hand in hand. The editor should have been able to edit the book and clean it up. To me, it felt like a rough draft. I even voiced that bit out loud by stating that if this was the best the editor could have done for this story then I didn't want to see it beforehand, and basically that the person who worked on this book afterwards was a damn miracle worker. But all the blame isn't on the editor. As a writer you need to be able to tell your story - whether it be fiction or non-fiction - and I just felt like the author wasn't being truthful and held back on a lot of things, lied, and so on. 1 Star.That brings me to likeability. I can't say that this is a book that anyone would possibly like . It's not a fun story, people. And at some points it read like a pamphlet on the statistics of African American men and women affected and diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. I would have liked the author to have given us more about himself, tell us his story and things that happened to him and not just "stories" of others. He went on and on about denial when it was glaringly obvious that he, too, was suffering from the same thing, sadly. 1 Star.Now, onto content. Content was where he got the highest rating from me. A solid 3 stars for what his book talked about. The lifestyle of these down low brothers and all that it entails. I need to say that it is an absolute eye-opener, informative, definitely very scary and disgusting. To think that people value human life so little as to put it at risk so callously is appalling, disgusting and shocking. I can't even begin to explain how reading one part of this story about a 17 year old young man made me feel. How he ended up with a death sentence for being so naive and innocent. Overall, like I said before, it was a quick read, so that was a perk for me since I didn't want to give too much time to this book because of how much I disliked it and due to how much it made me angry. So maybe that's a plus? I'm not sure. Then I was flopping back and forth on whether it was a 2-Star book or 1-Star book. As you can see, I made my decision. 1 Star
