Books like Something Like Happiness by Kevin Esser

Like all Acolyte Press books--along with the titles published by its predecessor imprints, Coltsfoot Press and BL Classics--SOMETHING LIKE HAPPINESS is a work of positive boylove fiction: a novel about a handsome, popular, Midwest-American, 14-year-old boy, who is most definitely attracted to boys, not girls. The story is an honest, often humorous, and frequently erotic account of this one teen boy's (much like every teen boy's) fumbling quest for emotional and sexual fulfillment. We first encounter Andy ripping out from a town library book a color plate of "Amor Omnia Vincit," Carravaggio's famous painting of naked and cocky Cupid, to add to his secret stash of erotic boy images. Regarding himself as "a bit of danger freak," Andy is drawn to the fringes of an alternate world of pot-smoking and commercial sex, and he participates in one memorably wild all-boys orgy. But before he slips too far in this direction, Andy falls intoxicatingly in love with his neighbor, Matthew, who has just reached puberty and who hero-worships Andy. Other boys of various types swirl through Andy's adolescent Odyssey, each depositing an unforgettable milestone in the narrative. Book reviewer Robert Rockford wrote: "Thanks to the artistry hidden in the author's graceful handling of its theme, SOMETHING LIKE HAPPINESS is a very sexy and wonderfully entertaining BL novel."

First publish date: 1993