How will you be able to know in advance whether you should give this book a go? Well, if you are so new to fiction that you are shocked when the good girl dating the good guy decides to have a fling with the bad boy, you just might love this novel. If you can be shocked that a preacher’s daughter is not just sexually active, but likes it a lot, then there may be something here for you. If a story about girl coming between two southern cousins—and one of them is named Beau—then there is definitely a temptation waiting here. If the idea of sexual tension so overwhelming exists that it can cause people to make really bad decision seems like something new and strange to you, then by all means plunk down the money and pick up the book.
Otherwise, well, the odds seem to be pretty overwhelming that in some way at some point you have been through all this before. (Heck, even the cartoon Hey, Arnold! did a coupe of episodes in which cousins cause the girls who love them to behave strangely.) Of course, not all stories need to be original to be entertaining. If that were so, then maybe a book a year would be worth the reader. At this point in the history of fiction, those holding out hope to read something they’ve never encountered before either have to be very readers who taste encompasses every possibility or someone who is a book a year reader. Originality is all about perception and experience: those who have never seen the episode with Arnold and his creepy cousin from the country could, theoretically, find The Vincent Boys wildly original.
The rest of its readership will have to determine readability entirely on a scale related to entertainment. Since this is not the story of a bizarre love triangle, but rather one told a million times, can it be said to have entertainment value? And the answer is: sure. As long as your entertainment calculus is not also based on Melville-level mastery of characterization or talent for putting words together in ways that are unlike most things you read in a piece of fan fiction posted for free on the internet somewhere, then, yes, sure, there much to find entertaining here. This is doubly true if the version you read is the uncensored version with the explicit sex scenes. One runs the risks of feeling as though they’ve indulged in a guilty pleasure that can only be shared with the most trustworthy of friends after reading the dirty version, of course. But then one likely will feel the same way after reading the non-explicit version too. The only difference being the cause of that guilty feeling.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that feeling. Everybody has their guilty pleasures. Some people actually enjoy listening to Journey albums. And reading The Vincent Boys surely is time better spent than that.
