Review - Addicted by Liam Whitlock
Joey and Christian have been best friends since childhood. When they reach adolescence, their paths begin to diverge but they remain good friends. Joey pursues scientific interests while Christian becomes a jock, the high school quarterback everyone wants. The two have a few sexual encounters in their teens, but while Joey accepts his attraction to men, Christian determines to pursue a hetero-normative lifestyle to go with his jock persona. Both young men get accepted to the same college and decide to be roommates. It’s then that Joey hatches a plan, an experiment to see if he can break down the barriers Christian has erected and make him accept his “true” desires. It’s a bold plan, and very unethical, but will it work?
I believe “Addicted” is probably the first book I’ve read that could quite accurately be described as speculative erotic fiction. Many works of erotica have a fantasy element, but this story starts with a plausible “what-if” premise and builds a believable, although probably unlikely, scenario that comes down to drug-assisted brainwashing. It’s a more modern take on love potion fantasies.
The story is told from Joey’s point of view until about halfway through, then it shifts to Christian with occasional returns to Joey here and there. It’s potentially confusing but not enough to distract from the story. The young man is definitely smart, perhaps even brilliant, but Joey doesn’t seem to ever consider the ethical questions his “experiment” raises. He’s convinced that he is “helping” his best friend uncover his true self.
It’s hard to get a good read on Christian since we only start to get his point of view after he is already well under the spell of Joey’s conditioning. The big question, of course, is whether or not the sex addict Christian becomes is really his true self, or the product of his best friend’s experiment. I don’t feel like the story provides a definitive answer to that, and it probably shouldn’t. The ending suggests that the changes Joey has wrought are probably permanent and Christian is quite happy with them.
“Addicted” is available from Smashwords.
