After seeing the movie Geography Club and being presented with the opportunity to review LGBT books by Lauren Becker, I was extremely pleased that the first book I get to read and review is The Otto Digmore Difference by Brent Hartinger, the author of the book that the movie Geography Club was based on.

A road trip book can be all kinds of fun, especially when one of the characters loves those kinds of stories in movies, such as one of my favorites To Wong Fu Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar. The incidents that cropped up for Otto and Russel were a bit stretchy, sometimes, but there was the air of adventure and thrill that you might expect in a film, something he delighted in (I'm sure!).

As for Otto, our main character, the author gave us, in him, an example of how horrible people can be online, safe from confronting the target of their taunts and threats. Otto, with disfiguring scars on one side of his face, doesn't hear these so much in person anymore, but online people feel protected and he is still sent gifs of fried chickens, insinuations that he should commit suicide.

Otto doesn't become a victim because of these, but he isn't immune to these people either. It hurts, these dark parts of the Internet. Plus, having to have a public face for his fans all the time drains a person. His character, while having moments of what feel like utter deflation to me, is still strong because he remains in spite of these obstacles. He doesn't let them destroy him.

I liked Otto's remembrance of his home before his big break. The Hive was a collective for artists of all kinds with nary a night passing by quietly. It reminded me of the Cloud Club, a similar place where musician and author Amanda Palmer resided. That place always sounded like a haven for creativity and I imagine Otto found a lot of grace and solace there.

Ironically, it was after he got everything he wanted (t.v. role on Hammered, money, etc.) that he felt the most lost. While not the most beautiful of descriptions, the level of detail the Brent put into describing Otto's life and his place of residence was high. It was easy to be put into the locations that Otto visited, starting with his apartment decorated by an interior designer.

I loved the callbacks to Brent's Russel Middlebrook series, which I remember most fondly from The Geography Club. There were also plenty of nerdy references, such as Pokémon Go and Stranger Things.

Russell, apart from being the bright half of the duo, had a good point himself when he was talking about Hollywood movies. As a screenwriter, he had the unique perspective of seeing how, to quote him:

"...for every Star Wars movie that gets made, every new Marvel universe movie, that means there's one less other studio movie made. There's less of a chance of some future movie they might love."

I know that I love the Wizarding World movies. I love Marvel movies and I even enjoy a lot of the remakes that Disney is making. However, it begs the question, where's the originality? Russell's point, what movies are we missing because we as the Hollywood consumer base are comfortable with the same old, same old, is an excellent one.

I admit that I did get a bit frustrated with how many stops there were in Otto's quest to get this final audition. The summary made it sound as though he had one destination all along, but it was much more involved than that. There were some characters, too, that frustrated me, especially when the ending was resolved for this book (the first in the Otto Digmore series).

At the beginning of the novel we meet Fiona, Otto's agent, who he describes as a great agent that isn't a big one, but is still very dedicated to her clients. Her assistant, Greg, is the one that mentions the aforementioned audition to him for a movie called The Tulip Vase. Right from the get go with his involvement I could tell something was off because he never let Otto talk to Fiona about it, so I felt that something weird was going on. It turned out that my suspicion was correct because she had nothing to do either with the initial audition or Greg egging Otto on to meet the director and audition for him personally. That was very sneaky behavior and I would not have been able to trust him after an episode like that.

It was this series of actions that caused Fiona, once she found out, to drop Otto as a client because she didn't feel he trusted her anymore. While Greg made excuses for why Fiona could never come to the phone, Otto never pushed too hard against these, so I think he's at least a little responsible. Then, after Greg admits what he has done, he also confesses that he has feelings for Otto, wants to become a manager himself, and would like to manage/date Otto. Neither of these sounded like good ideas because a) he can't be trusted (see the previous sneaky behavior and outright lying to Otto as evidence) and b) there was no sign of any sort of affection that might have led to them ending things where they did. After the deceitful behavior, I couldn't understand how Otto would place himself in that position.

The biggest romantic feelings in the book were, I felt, between Otto and Russel, though it was one sided as Russel had been married 1-2 weeks during the majority of the book. It felt strange that I would get all these feelings when I knew that Russel was a faithfully married man and Otto knew that, though clearly he had to work out his feelings for his former boyfriend (Otto and Russel dated/were lovers in a previous Brent Hartinger novel).

I'm not sure where this book will go from here. Perhaps there will be redemption for certain characters that I disliked at the close of the novel. Hopefully Otto will be able to find some of the success that he has the talent for. Time will tell, as will the next book in the Otto Digmore series.



I received a copy of this book from Lauren Becker as part of the LGBT Book Tour in exchange for an honest review.