BOYSTOWN Season 5 by Jake Biondi #LGBT #Review

Dana reviews BOYSTOWN Season 5 by Jake Biondi (Published June 1, 2016, 295 pages) A copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.

To read the review for BOYSTOWN Season 1 click here. To read the review for BOYSTOWN Season 2 click here. To read the review for BOYSTOWN Season 3 click here. To read the review for BOYSTOWN Season 4 click here.

 

Blurb:  As rescue crews search for survivors at the site of the fiery plane crash, Logan Pryce is rushed to the hospital in an attempt to save his life. At the same time, Dr. Mateo Martinez works to save the lives of two men and Joyelle Mancini copes with the shocking results of her baby’s paternity test.

While the Mancini and Ciancio families mourn the loss of family members, the past and present collide with the arrival of Camille Ciancio, a woman bent on revenge who wastes no time implementing her plan to destroy to the Mancini family once and for all. The loss of loved ones also brings former lovers together and tears others apart. Plus, the arrival of a stranger to Boystown impacts several residents in ways that alter their lives forever.

Summer in Chicago sizzles with Pride celebrations, the excitement of Market Days, a memorable ground-breaking ceremony, and an unforeseen engagement. It all leads up to a double-wedding event that brings evil schemes to light and plunges the lives of many Boystown residents into peril.

There’s no place like BOYSTOWN!

Buy links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes

The characters of BOYSTOWN are back and the story is better than ever. At the end of Season 4, I had to admit I was getting slightly tired of the same characters behaving badly and making the same dumb mistakes. The crazy things that happened were riveting, but I wanted to see some change and growth. With the cliffhanger ending in the last book, I wasn’t even sure how many people would come through it alive in order to make those changes.

In the previous books most of the cliffhanger endings left the main characters hurt but alive, in the beginning of this story, two important characters don’t make it. One I wasn’t too sad about, but the other… The plane that Ben set a bomb on did crash land, and the Mancini brothers made it out, but only one of the new half brothers. The Ciancio family experienced some loss, and because they were thrown from the plane in different directions one brother is missing.

Ben, the obsessive psychopath, was in cahoots with Rachel who for me is the big baddie at the moment. For the most part she has driven away all her allies, but manages to lead a few men by their unmentionables by using her body as collateral. When she finally takes out someone who I wanted dead, I couldn’t even be happy because it might be one more thing she would get away with. She is absolutely the most ruthless character. Oh..wait, A new Ciancio shows up and well, I might be wrong about who is more ruthless than who. Only time will tell, I think.

What I liked the most is that some of the characters that I wanted to change are making changes. Derek has stopped trying to control his ex wife Joy, and has devoted himself to Cole. Emmett who is the nicest guy in the world has had everything go totally wrong for him. Most recently a cheating fiance, and as much as I don’t want to see him hurt anymore, I was so glad that he found out. The lies and betrayals would have hurt him more in the long run. Logan manages to survive his trouble from the last book, quits drinking,  and gets the help he needs. Jesse has gotten his act together and is tremendous support for him. Hugo also confesses his wrongdoings and he and Jensen are making a real go of it.

Max and Keith are in a unsteady state in this book. Both of them are separated from the ones they love, and I don’t doubt that they have a preference who they want to be with. With their relationships in flux they both seem ready to cling to whoever will have them in the meantime. For both of them this is causing more problems than they know. Mateo displays some real coldhearted tendencies but he’s being blackmailed for something.

Cole and Michael also the nice guys of the series both have made an enemy we don’t meet until near the end, which leads us to the next cliffhanger. A bomb goes off in a hotel where Derek and Cole were supposed to be staying for their honeymoon, but someone else is in their suite. How much damage will the blast create? A missing brother shows up to take revenge on the other and in a grand standoff 3 bodies go into the water. Someone’s going to get caught kissing someone who’s not theirs, someone kidnaps a baby from the hospital, someone escapes from the mental treatment center, and someone is stabbed. The danger never ends for this group, and I can’t stop eating it up.

The big positives for me in this book were the lessons learned by some of the characters that led to more honesty and compassion. There are two new characters introduced, Adam and Patrick and while they seem nice, there is still an air of mystery around them, and I can’t make any long term judgement calls on whether they will be one of the good guys, the confused guys, or the bad guys. If you enjoy a great soap opera like story, with interesting and diverse characters, you will love the BOYSTOWN series and Season 5 is the best one yet.

9.5/10 Pots of Gold (95% Recommended) – Compares to 4.75/5 Stars

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Jake Biondi fell in love with “The Windy City” at an early age.  He left the Chicago area for four years to attend the University of Notre Dame, from which he graduated with degrees in English and Business.  He was awarded the university’s prestigious William Mitchell Award for Playwriting.  Upon graduating from Notre Dame, Biondi returned to Chicago where he attended and graduated from the Loyola University Chicago School of Law.   He has been living in Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood for over 20 years.

While studying literature, Biondi became a huge fan of Charles Dickens whose novels were originally released in installments, each ending in a cliffhanger to keep readers coming back for more.  Because of his love of those novels as well as television dramas such as Dynasty, Knots Landing, Dallas, and Revenge, Jake Biondi decided to create a serialized saga for contemporary audiences.  Thus, the BOYSTOWN series was born.

Biondi began BOYSTOWN in June of 2013 as an online story and intended to release one “episode” online per month, each ending in a cliffhanger. The story became so popular — and the online reading audience grew so quickly — that people from all over the country began to email him demanding to know what happened to their favorite characters and wanting the episodes to be released faster.  They also had suggestions for future storylines.  Excited by and grateful for his readers’ responses to BOYSTOWN, Biondi began to write and release installments more quickly.

In November of 2013, Biondi moved BOYSTOWN offline and published the first ten installments in book form as BOYSTOWN Season One.  The book became an international hit, with fans all over the globe clamoring for more.  BOYSTOWN Season Two was published in July of 2014, BOYSTOWN Season Three was released on May 1, 2015, BOYSTOWN Season Four was released on November 13, 2015, and BOYSTOWN Season Five was released on June 1, 2016.

Because of the popularity of the book series, fans have suggested that BOYSTOWN be turned into a television series.  Biondi recently completed the TV scripts for the first season of BOYSTOWN and hopes to bring the series to television in the very near future.