First Impressions – Jordan Locke

Jordan Locke is another of my early followers on Twitter, and I decided to read their book The Only Boy.

I should preface this review with the fact that I am probably not the target audience for this book. I suspected that going into reading it and nearly didn’t, I feared that fact would mar my review. It almost certainly has, but ultimately my review is my opinion, it isn’t and never could be an objective measure of a book’s quality.


I liked the concept of the story, the idea of a post-apocalyptic world where a disease has wiped out all the men leaving only women alive, and only a few survivors at that. The notion of re-introducing a male into that scenario also seemed interesting, however it seemed as though the relationship between Mary and Taylor, the two protagonists and alternative viewpoint characters, was the focus of the story. I don’t think I’m that interested in romances so the relationship didn’t really carry the story for me, which was a shame because the rest of the narrative seemed contrived to service it.

The first-person present tense took a little getting used to, and the constant switching between the two main characters worked at times and was simply disorientating at others. When it worked I felt it was a good choice, allowing the reader to see the same scene from two simultaneous and different perspectives. Yet I felt like some disembodied spirit on a chain being forever caught in a tug-of-war between the protagonists.

Overall, as I said above, I liked the concepts underpinning the story. I think they’re good and original ideas. Perhaps the teen romance is just something that I personally don’t click with, and without it holding my attention I wasn’t distracted from the other issues.
I would suggest that, if you are a fan of Young-Adult Dystopian Romance then you will probably find more value in reading this than I did.

I give this a rating of okay because, previous comments aside, I didn’t have trouble getting to the end of it, nor do I feel I wasted my time spent reading it. The concept is good, I just feel the execution could have been better.

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