Rating: 
Summary: Tale of questing for self-identity and establishing bounds
Review: "The same thing with surfing. If you had a tan, and walked around going "Dude" all the time, you were just another cartoon, like gay people on television. No, being a surfer meant you got out, faced your own fears and lack of expertise, and did it. It was like being queer. The rush came from getting better at it." -Matthew, 18Indeed Matt has gone through an adolescence that is drastically different from many of his peers, one that is filled with fears, temptations, and heartbreaking relationships. At 18, few months away from his high school graduation, Matt recounts with his uncle Tiger, who is merely 8 years older than he, at his grandmother's funeral. Matt only vaguely remembers his uncle and is always haunted by the incident when he caught Tiger making out with a brawny air force officer in the dark empty theater balcony. Not only did Matt's aunts begrudge with Tiger, they did not bother to notify him of the funeral. Parting with his boyfriend Chris who has gone off to college, Matt realizes the need for a change in his life. He loves his mother but whose self-righteousness has shunned him and made his life around the house difficult. Tiger has graciously offered Matt to stay with him and his partner Mark at the beach and teaches him surveying. Aside from work and school, Matt is taught how to surf by Tiger and Mark who get him a surfing board, a wet suit, and a leash and a nose guard as graduation gift. This novel is a very quick and relaxing read. I finish it in one sitting. It's almost like an armchair travel book of the North Carolina coast. Matt tells the story and he flips back and forth on his life before and after moving to the beach. So you will see parallel stories running concurrently, particularly reminiscence of Chris and his novel gay adventures with a married man Tillett, who only uses him for pleasure. Aside from the erotic and graphic prose (which is inevitable and steamy), the book also explores the role of Tiger on Matt. Under the mentorship of Tiger and Mark, along with his own trials and errors, Matt comes to establish the metes and bounds of relationships. He realizes he cannot "look for himself in other people". The secret (I will not give it away) that accounts for the family grudge against Tiger has only drawn Matt closer to his uncle ever. For Matt, learning about his uncle (and his past and his relationship with Mark who divorces his wife) has always been a part of learning about himself. Tiger has blazed the trail Matt wishes to go. He has taught Matt how good and difficult it is to have a lover and a life together. When Matt reunions with his friend Jeep and finds out about his secret crush on him, Matt is shocked but approaches his best friend with passion. In a sense, the book is very "real" in capturing the fear, the helplessness, the love, the naivete, the innocence, the stupidity, the jealousy, and the sorry-but-I-cannot-help-it feeling of an 18 year old who ventures out into the queer life. A quick read. 3.8 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: An unremarkable and pedestrian gay coming-of-age story
Review: For his debut novel, Quinn has fashioned a setting that is idyllic in more ways than one. North Carolina in the early 1980s is re-invented as a place where gay surfers and jocks comfortably refer to themselves as "queers," where HIV test results are available overnight, where the attractive straight men are assertively bisexual, and where the gravest threats to a gay man are a lack of trust in oneself and a head injury from a storm-tossed surfboard. Within these surroundings, the author follows the exploits of Matt as he comes to terms with his sexuality and insinuates himself into an informal gay family (complete with children). At times, the atmosphere seems more appropriate for an exercise in wishful thinking than a realistic portrayal of gay life in a small Southern beach resort twenty years ago. Like many novels in this genre, "Metes and Bounds" contains a number of explicit (yet rather pedestrian) sexual escapades strung together by occasionally successful depictions of the novel's characters. Matt himself, however, is disappointingly nondescript, in spite of his angst-ridden introspection; Quinn is not polished enough to give his protagonist a voice worthy of his own narrative. Rather than replicate an authentic vernacular, the first-person perspective seems designed to disguise shoddy writing. Quinn is especially prone to the annoying and repetitive use of certain words and expressions, sometimes within the same paragraph or even sentence. For example, he has an odd affinity for the word "grin": "I started grinning," "I couldn't stop grinning," "Tiger said, grinning back," "he looked at me grinning"--and that's just on pages 121-122. Except for a few surfing metaphors, there's really nothing to distinguish this novel from the hundreds of other gay coming-of-age novels. Regardless of its rather ham-fisted use of flashbacks (designed, I suppose, to shroud secrets that are never that surprising), the book settles within a foreseeable range of emotions and events. Quinn maintains a wishful (and wistful) romanticism throughout--until the very last page, when a "grinning" jock reaches for Matt.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely has potential
Review: I absolutely loved this book. I enjoyed the story, the characters, and the speed at which the book flows. This book progresses relatively quick which (in my opinion) is one of its best qualities, because it's hard for me to focus on a book if it's so full of detail that it takes forever for the story to progress. The book isn't without its flaws, however. I remember running across 5 type-os/grammatical errors (which is a fairly trivial issue to me, but it might be a more substantial issue to others), a couple of the problems encountered by the characters seem to be trite and used in quite a few books, better transitions to the flashbacks could have been used at some points, and there were 3 times when I felt that the lead character strayed off the normal path of his typical behavior. Neither of these really take away from the story and enjoyment of the book, but they are areas that the author should have polished a bit better. I hope to read more from Quinn. I feel he has potential to be a great writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I can honestly say this one of the worst books I have ever read. There was basically no plot, no interesting characters and the writing style was so elementary it was painful. The one good thing about it was that it was a quick read, you can probably finish it in less than a day, and believe me that's all the time you'll want to spend with it.
Rating:
Summary: A waste of time
Review: I don't fault this book for being badly written, even though it's very clunky and artless. My problem is with the lack of any tension in the plot. Nothing happens! We have a story of a boy in the middle of nowhere who is unconditionally accepted by his father, gay friends and relatives. Heck, even the children in this story never question his lifestyle. Although it's nice to see such a perfect world without predjudice and homophobia, it just doesn't make for particularly interesting reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't Put It Down
Review: I don't usually like gay fiction books because they're usually just about sex. But someone else's review on Amazon.Com persuaded me to buy this one. And I'm glad I did. It's an outstanding book! I feel like I was right there with the character. Jay's an excellent author. I couldn't put the book down once I started, and I was sorry it was over when I got to the last page. Jay needs to write Part-2! :)
Rating:
Summary: The one I almost didn't read.
Review: I have rarely been one to read books about subjects that don't outright interest me. I had heard this book had a lot to do with surfing, so being an inlander (mid-MO), I was neither familiar with or interested in surfing. But I read it anyway. I'm always willing to give things at least one try. What I found was a moving and remarkably honest story about a young gay man named Matt. What threw me for a loop was the abundant lack of clichés within the pages. Nothing was romanticized. People made real mistakes and had real successes. Halfway through, I had expected to give this book 4 stars because some of it feels redundant and some of the chronology is confusing. But I bumped it back up to 5 stars by the time I reached the last page. So much of what Mr. Quinn writes is beautiful and moving. It wasn't one of those tear-jerk novels, either (although it was in some places). Instead, it reached to places that no book I've ever read ever has. I felt what Matt felt and even what others felt. This book is beautiful, calming, and a wonderful read. I recommend it highly to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: The one I almost didn't read.
Review: I have rarely been one to read books about subjects that don't outright interest me. I had heard this book had a lot to do with surfing, so being an inlander (mid-MO), I was neither familiar with or interested in surfing. But I read it anyway. I'm always willing to give things at least one try. What I found was a moving and remarkably honest story about a young gay man named Matt. What threw me for a loop was the abundant lack of clichés within the pages. Nothing was romanticized. People made real mistakes and had real successes. Halfway through, I had expected to give this book 4 stars because some of it feels redundant and some of the chronology is confusing. But I bumped it back up to 5 stars by the time I reached the last page. So much of what Mr. Quinn writes is beautiful and moving. It wasn't one of those tear-jerk novels, either (although it was in some places). Instead, it reached to places that no book I've ever read ever has. I felt what Matt felt and even what others felt. This book is beautiful, calming, and a wonderful read. I recommend it highly to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS EVER WRITTEN!!
Review: I loved this book. How I wished I could have experienced such support dealing with coming out. The parents in this book were wonderful. Tiger was the greatest. I normally hate cold water on the beach, but I enjoyed spending time surfing with these guys. This was an enjoyable read. The explicit sex was exciting and in very good taste. It was put where it belonged to further the story. BUY THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: Decent plot but a painful read . . .
Review: I picked up this book from the library with a bunch of other gay books (albeit of the trashier variety). Expecting that it would be a nice, "literary" deviation from the trash books, I started my plunge into gay fiction with 'Metes and Bounds.' I wasn't pleased with what I found. The plot in the book was decent, nothing too special. It's basically a coming-of-age novel about a guy, Matt, finding his place in the world as a "queer" guy. (Though, why he didn't use the less-irksome and more PC word "gay" is beyond me.) The real pitfall of the novel is its writing. I absolutely abhorred it. The whole novel is written in an on-again off-again "Southern accent." The narration constantly switches grammatical correctness on and off as if Matt, the narrator, is one moment a college professor with a Ph.D. and the next a high school drop-out. The plot goes back and forth from the present to the past to the more-recent-than-the-past-but-not-quite-present-either. I didn't find it it hard to follow along, but it made me wonder what the point of it was. It seemed that the author was trying to be deep for the sake of being deep as if he were a gay, white, male Toni Morrison. Another part of the writing that I found redundant was the use of vulgarity. I'm not a conservative person when it comes to this sort of thing, which is demonstrated by the fact that the book I'm reading currently is entitled 'Hunk House,' however, I have to wonder if the use of profanity both sexual and otherwise really served any purpose. It wasn't sexy. It was just thrown in there at places where it was just superfluous. It was like the author was just throwing in dirty words every other paragraph to distract the reader so that he might not notice the bad writing. Overall, I found this to be a less-than enjoyable read. I like to vary my literary books and my fluffy reads. This book, however, fits into neither of those categories because it's too poorly written to be literary and too full of itself to be fluff. It is what it is, and what it is is just plain bad. There are plenty of enjoyable, well-written books out there to read. Don't waste your time or money on this one.
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