Age, Love, and Understanding

Reading this book had me oddly conflicted; it had some passages in particular that I really enjoyed and thought were well written, I found myself getting invested in the characters' troubles as well, but the BDSM/rape kink bit was completely irrelevant to the story and just didn't work. I have never wished for a protagonist to die before, but as I was reading that part of the story, I kept hoping he'd have a heart attack! And this was knowing that it would turn out to be a mere fantasy. It's just that, having been portrayed as the gay rights attorney willing to help the underpriviledged pro bono, thinking he'd fantasize about committing a crime like raping a young minority member with money problems made him truly hateful. Yuck! And since the whole thing was completely random with no bearing on the actual story, he didn't really get to redeem himself. Rafael was quite a sympathetic guy but I didn't really think Aaron deserves a happy ending with him. The whole conclusion actually seemed rather rushed. Then again reading further might have been a pain...