Gabby's Reviews > Dirty Mind

I loved Roe Horvat's debut novel The Layover, so when I heard about this one I was very excited to read it. This book follows a 30-year-old creative writing professor / author named Alex, and an 18-year-old student studying to become a doctor named Christian.

One thing I really liked about this book is that it takes place in Freiburg in Germany, which is really fascinating! Almost all of the books I read take place in America, so I always really enjoy reading books that take place in other countries, and just like Roe Horvat's debut novel, these characters are both culturally diverse, which I super appreciated. Another thing I really enjoyed about this book is the twelve year age gap between the two main characters, by the time the story really picks up Alex is 33 and Christian is 21, so it's not a huge age gap, but it's still a large enough age gap to be interesting. I also really love the side character Dieter, Christian's straight room mate, and I thought he was hilarious.



As for the things I didn't like: this story was not as powerful as Horvat's debut novel: The Layover. That book hit me with all the emotion feels, and this one I thought was just okay. The romance took forever to actually happen, and it's one of those annoying things where everyone knows they are supposed to be together except for the main character, so you're just waiting and waiting for them to figure out they both want each other even though it's so obvious... Alex is incredibly insecure, and he thinks the twelve year age gap is too much and he thinks Christian only sees him as this old man that he gets advice from, and it just got really repetitive with Alex thinking this way... Like if they just had one conversation about how they were feeling, so much of the confrontational bull shit could have been avoided and this story would have been a lot shorter. (It's only one hundred something pages to begin with.)

This story was good, but it wasn't great. It's a quick, short read though so I'm not complaining, and I will still pick up anything Roe Horvat writes in the future. I really do adore her writing style and her diverse characters, and I love that her books always take place in different countries!