Love the One You're With

Rating:
Summary: BACK TO HIS BEST................THANK GOD !!!
Review: James Earl Hardy returns with the 5th installment of his "B Boy Blues" series featuring Mitchell and Raheim along with a colorful cast of supporting characters and thank god a decent story.after the last couple of books left me feeling majorly disappointed this is return to form the writing although still a little preachy and in ya face is back to the style and content of the first 2 books in the series the action takes place when Raheim is in LA making his first movie and Mitchell is left alone in NYC where all he finds is PHYNE men who wanna get him naked the story moves along at a good pace the only criticism is that the story takes place in 1995 come on JEH move it along a bit we wanna know what goes on in the 21st century .....

Rating:
Summary: Dreadful, boring, asinine, and an insult to all literature
Review: James Earl hardy should've quit after 2nd Time Around and went back to journalism. Love the One you're with is very boring and unnecessary. There is NO tension whatsoever. I realize JEH feels compelled to depict positive Black gay relationships, but unfortunately by doing this he is sacrificing any conflict that will make his work engrossing and unforgettable. Raheim and Mitchell no longer have any grave issues to deal with in each other, nothing threatens to break them up, all they do is compliment and coo at each other. By the book's middle it was obvious that everything was going to end as neatly as it began. The UPS man is a very ineffective monkey wrench, I never for one second got the feeling he'd threaten R. & M.'s commitment because there is no build up of suspense. In fact, the story had no climax!

It's obvious JEH was grasping for straws while writing this. Some of the word choice is amateurish and downright childish: "Dr. Spock-ish ears", "skin color of a Planter's peanut", "Chipmunk cheeks". He also has a bad habit of beginning every scene with a character quote, too lazy to set things up with description or narrative. One of THE most annoying things is how he'd trail off.... there wasn't a page where his sentences didn't... I mean it gets pretty annoying... A lot of events he just borrowed from his original novel- cream of wheat burning, meeting the "love interest" in a gay social club, going to see a movie on the first date, running into the love interest as he makes a delivery. In fact, the entire plot relies on tired coincidence to move it along because JEH is apparently too lazy to brainstorm for less contrived ideas. In New York City, filled with millions upon millions of people, Mitchell and the UPS guy run into each other for no plausible reason on multiple occasions all over town, and yet strangely this has never happened until this novel.

To enhance the feeble plot, he creates a long chapter about his relationship with an old boyfriend mentioned in B-Boy Blues. In this novel the guy is a right-wing republican out of touch with his ethnicity. In B-Boy Blues this boyfriend was without any flaws or baggage and they were a match made in heaven, but again JEH is clutching for straws so he pulls this new info out of nowhere. In another attempt he spends a very long time describing a school call Knowledge Hall though it is not integral to the novel at all. Once the chapter ends the school is never mentioned again. The same can be said for the gay organization chapter, after the chapter ends the group virtually ceases to exist. To try and further characterize Gene, he talks about his daily grooming ritual, his interior design, and his favorite TV shows, but it adds nothing new to him. We already knew he was vain and grand. The scenes following Mitchell around doing typical activities add nothing interesting, either, because who doesn't shop for food/clothes and get occasionally hit on while doing so? In B-Boy Blues the original cast was fiery, flawed, and BUSY, in this book they are so contently settled and even-tempered it's as if this is being written by a completely different and less talented writer.

This is an exhaustive review but my point is how inferior every new installment is in this series. I didn't even bother reading The Day Eazy-E died but from what I've gathered from other reviews it's just as unnecessary as Love the One you're with and If only for one night. All three of these books could have been written as one novel or better yet incorporated into 2nd Time around, which also lacked substantial conflict but at least it was fresh and had some good dialogue. Nothing of any great importance was presented in JEH's last three novels. An uneventful high school reunion, an HIV test which comes back negative, and a sexual indiscretion- which although inconsequential is described in revolting detail-are too trivial to be main plots in a novel, especially when nothing else is happening. B-Boy Blues was such a rich, complicated book that warrants all the praise and controversy it gets. Unfortunately for us readers it was just a fluke. JEH is supposed to be writing the final installment of the series soon, hopefully in that one Pooquie, Little Bit, and Gene will get on an airplane with Basil Henderson and they are all killed in a fiery crash. In my opinion JEH has done a very big disservice to his characters by diluting them and making them less legendary with each new unsuccessful effort.

Rating:
Summary: Number 5, and still counting.
Review: LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH is the latest installment on the relationship between fan favorites "Pookie" Rivers and "Lil Bit" Crawford. This time around, "Pookie" has caught the acting bug and is signed to star in a motion picture in California. "Lil" supports him and hates to see him go, but doesn't have time to miss him. It seems that when we want love, it's never around or the wrong type appears. In "Lil's" case, it's many forms of love or lust that appears in men that he could have been involved with before his relationship that keeps appearing before his eyes that distract him, and not always in an annoying way. Enter Montgomery, musician & romantic catch-of-the-day who drives our Mr. Crawford to look deep into areas of his heart that may satisfy more that what he already has at home. Kinda wordy and may run-on in areas, this novel manages to remain a very interesting read and remains faithful to the core characters.

Rating:
Summary: Number 5, and still counting.
Review: LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH is the latest installment on the relationship between fan favorites "Pookie" Rivers and "Lil Bit" Crawford. This time around, "Pookie" has caught the acting bug and is signed to star in a motion picture in California. "Lil" supports him and hates to see him go, but doesn't have time to miss him. It seems that when we want love, it's never around or the wrong type appears. In "Lil's" case, it's many forms of love or lust that appears in men that he could have been involved with before his relationship that keeps appearing before his eyes that distract him, and not always in an annoying way. Enter Montgomery, musician & romantic catch-of-the-day who drives our Mr. Crawford to look deep into areas of his heart that may satisfy more that what he already has at home. Kinda wordy and may run-on in areas, this novel manages to remain a very interesting read and remains faithful to the core characters.

Rating:
Summary: Staying Faithful
Review: Mitchell Crawford and Raheim "Pooquie" Rivers are in love. They are very much a couple and are committed to one another. Mitchell is a multitalented singer and writer, and he is also a teacher. Pooquie is a model who has just garnered his first movie role in Hollywood. Pooquie's movie role would prove to be the hardest test of their relationship. Mitchell and Pooquie reside in New York City and hope that distance will only make the heart grow fonder.

Separated by 3000 miles from the man he loves, Mitchell is counting the days until his lover returns. As is always the case in a relationship, temptation rears its ugly head. Mitchell is approached by all sorts of men and he tries to keep a comfortable distance from anyone he might be attracted to.

Montgomery "Montee" Simms is a man that Mitchell is immediately attracted to. Magnetism might best describe the attraction that these two men have for one another. The more Mitchell tries to deny the attraction between Montee and himself the bigger it grows. Pooquie looms in Mitchell's conscious and he wants to do right by him.

Will Mitchell cheat on Pooquie? Will Mitchell give into his attraction for Montee? In order to find out the answers to these questions you will have to read James Earl Hardy's Love The One You're With. The latest in The B-Boy Blues series does not disappoint and is well worth the read. The characters in the story are real and honest and they help the author tell a wonderfully entertaining story.

Reviewed by Simone A. Hawks

Rating:
Summary: SO MUCH FOR CONTENT! TOO MUCH POLITICS IN IT!
Review: Mr Hardy is a fantastic writer. Shoot, I love all his work, but I find myself bored reading this book. Unlike B-boy Blues and 2nd time around, LTOYW does not have the suspenseful conflict that Raheim and Little Bit had back in the day. He just parallels a lot of details from the other books, which makes me think why is this called a sequel when it's just a repetition. I didn't appreciate much the content of Little Bit's republican encounter and how Mr. Hardy incorporated that as if it was the center of the story. Monty's Bisexuality is ambiguous... and Little Bit's encounter with him wasn't really hot. Raheim still plays the old boy... and it never continued on as to Raheim coming out. It's a great read, but don't be too thrilled with the money you spending. Spend on the Bboy Blues or 2nd Time Around.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good......
Review: This is the latest installment in the ongoing adventures of "Little Bit" (Mitchell, the narrator) and his lover "Pookie" (Raheim, the B-Boy of the earlier books). Not a bad story just seems a little distracted: Raheim is really not a character in this book as he is out of town and I think the story suffers without him. The focus of the book is whether Mitchell can/will be faithful to his lover but I found the interactions that Mitchell had with each of the potential lovers a little unbelievable (it just seems that everyone wants Mitchell!) and I also thought the book was rather preachy in that several scenes seemed clumsily inserted just so the author could reveal his strong distaste for certain things (African-American republicans, gay interracial relationships, etc) or so the author could have one of the characters tell someone off in sharp "diva" language. Overall this is not a great book...but it is an entertaining read.

Rating:
Summary: To the cheaters out there!
Review: This was a change in pace for JEH, he has not written any other story with such get skills in a while. I actually enjoyed the book even though I was a little hurt with the ending but their is a lesson with self control. The negative thing is some of his topics seem to contradict themselves. But it is a good reading.

Rating:
Summary: To the cheaters out there!
Review: This was a change in pace for JEH, he has not written any other story with such get skills in a while. I actually enjoyed the book even though I was a little hurt with the ending but their is a lesson with self control. The negative thing is some of his topics seem to contradict themselves. But it is a good reading.