I think it's important to take this book at face value, a book about an adult actor for Helix Studios, written by the screenwriter (using that term loosely) for Helix Studios, and bankrolled and published by the owner of Helix Studios, Keith Miller. So the book and its book tour was a great way for all of the above to make more money for Keith--and I'm sure they succeeded on that front.

I had a hard time getting into the book His Own Way out by Taylor Saracen. I didn't mesh well with the writing, It ended up putting me into a reading slump, and it made me read this slowly.

The story was interesting, but at one point the protagonist messes up so many times, it's painful to keep reading. I liked the factor of creating a story inspired by a real person, that was fun to me. Overall, this book is intriguing and the idea is fun, though the plotline and the characters could be better.

I forgot to review this book last year, because I hated it soo much. This book is homophobic drivel. The moral of the story was what...if you're a bullied lgbtq+ kid you can look forward to being a...porn star. Awful book.

I held off reviewing His Own Way Out because I found myself frustrated over a number of issues with the book. First, reading it with no backstory, it feels very disjointed and randomly episodic-- jumping time to hit 'the highlights'. I was also extremely troubled that the author, in telling the character Blake's story, gave no real insight in to why he did what he did, or how he was feeling-- leading to the events as they unfolded. Then we reach a turning point and the book just ends-- with one flowery paragraph that feels completely out of place with the rest of the narrative.

After I finished reading, I found out that this was intended as a fictional but semi-autobiographical account of twink porn star, Blake Mitchell's life. (He actually did the book tour with the author.) The book, though it may be an honest account of actual events, never feels complete. The details are missing. I also am unclear why Helix Studio decided to create a series (Rise Up) of books about young gay men that all end up doing porn, as an LGBT 'service?... For a YA audience?... I'm just not sure their intent. Their stated mission just sounds confusing to me. I'm pretty sure if I was a parent, I would not be buying this book for my gay son to read for inspiration.

I, in no way, want to suggest that I am judging Blake Mitchell for the path his life has taken. But with the many roadblocks he experienced while still a minor, I would have loved more insight. The book suggests that every single adult that Blake encountered failed him.

I guess you could say this is a coming of age book. It's not a coming out (as gay) book because Blake still maintains he is bisexual; though he is a gay porn star and in a gay relationship. Again, just trying to decide who the audience for this book is intended to be. This is most definitely not a romance. There are sexual undertones but the sex (erotica) is downplayed in the book.

Blake Mitchell's story is quite compelling in itself. I just wish it was told better here.

I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

One surprise after the other, it shocked me to discover what is behind this man and what was his life like. I liked that Saracen didn't focus that much on the sexual aspects of the story, but on the really important instead. Although there wasn't a conventional development and sometimes I was merely reading, there were actual scenes and chapters in which I felt immersed, as if I was living Blake's life for a while. It will leave you amazed.

This was a tough book to sink my teeth into. Blake's teenage self was difficult to relate to, since he seemed to possess a clear 'fuck it' attitude to life in general, which comes back to bite him on the arse cheeks, and oh so hard. I was hooked through the text message conversations, revealing a wry sense of humour underneath the angsty teenager. I found his detachment from his mother and his brother to be another reminder of a particular manifestation of white culture - perhaps one which resonated less with me.

Blake's perseverance was impressive throughout the narrative, especially in the mid-section. I was warmed by his sincere effort to keep in touch with Greg, and found some of the later chapters to be touches of humour in an otherwise tragic story. The consequences of middle America's slow political crawl toward abandoning the mere semblance of looking out for anyone other than themselves were made painfully clear in this novel. Blake's perspective on the other characters was more of a limitation than a strength for the reader, given that it was so often clouded by his decisions to cut himself off from them.

Jay was a well-written character, and his addition to the novel made the read worth recommending. It tugs at the reader's heartstrings in all the right places, verging on the edge of being too cheesy at all times. The lurch toward exhibiting Blake's body for a vast number of individuals seeking pleasure through online stimulation was well-timed, coming across as a surprise twist in the plot. I was left feeling for Jay by the end of the narrative, since I often wonder whether discovering a use for Blake's body, dick and charm continues to motivate a self-made man who came from nothing and, as the book faithfully reminds us, could barely afford to clothe or feed himself after being expelled from two separate schools.

Blake's character moved me, albeit not to like the character, which speaks to Saracen's nascent writing skills and her ability to reach out to readers of the contemporary generation. There were quite a few critical moments that merit attention throughout the narrative, but the plot bridges between them did not come alive for me. The most memorable line was likely one which touched on how no one gave Blake the benefit of the doubt, and I wonder whether that holds true with every passing day in San Diego.

*Candid review posted in exchange for an ARC provided through NetGalley

I am an avid M/M reader in both romance and other tropes, so it’s easy to run across the name Blake Mitchell. I first heard about this book when it was being promoted in some of my reader groups and I was immediately intrigued. This is not a romance, so do not go in expecting that. It’s a somewhat autobiographical telling of Blake Mitchell finding his own way after having his sexuality announced for him. It details his struggles and the obstacles he faces. His strength in how he has handled what life has thrown him is quite commendable and left me with all the feelings during my read. I hope this book can find it's way to someone who could benefit from Blake's story and struggles and see how it's possible to come out positive on the other side. It was interesting seeing a side of Blake that we don’t see in his work, or on his social media platforms.

The writing in this book was top notch and I’ll definitely be picking up the next read from this author.

His Own Way Out (“HOWO”) by Taylor Saracen is the first book in the Rise Up series, serving as a semi-biographical origin story for Blake Mitchell, a performer at a gay porn studio.

HOWO is an atypical coming-of-age story. Despite its name, HOWO is not about coming out, or a teen coming to terms with his sexuality. Mitchell’s bisexuality is settled from the onset of the story. Instead, it’s a novel about Mitchell stumbling his way through his late teen years, escaping the gravity of his many mistakes, and a search for a better life than his small hometown has on offer.

HOWO is a book told in three parts — Junior Year. Senior Year. Adulthood. — and the major events that shaped those times in Mitchell’s life. Saracen ‘tongue-clicks’ and ‘tsks’ completely over Mitchell’s forced out-of-the-closet experience that occurred in his sophomore year, and thrusts the reader into his pooling teenage angst as Mitchell navigates the resulting small-town homophobic views at the start of his junior year.

Mitchell is introduced as a largely unlikeable protagonist, and he is often the master of his own demise through his free-wheeling drug habits and his ADHD-driven lack of impulse control. He shows little concern for himself, and even less for how his actions are impacting those around him. Authorities never give him any benefit of a doubt or second chances, and this perpetuates his downward spiral and the continual uprooting of Mitchell’s aspirations. As he reaches adulthood over the following years, Mitchell starts showing more signs of maturity, starts accepting more personal responsibility for his mistakes, starts looking for more ways to break out of his rut by taking things into his own hands. By the end of HOWO, Mitchell has shown tremendous growth.

While each book in the series is slated to follow how a different individual found their way into the porn industry, HOWO is not an erotic novel. — Yes, there are sexual encounters and adult themes throughout the novel, but they are neither its primary focus, nor overly gratuitous. Saracen's use of sex is mostly used to drive narrative in the context of Mitchell courting guys from other schools at high school parties, using anonymous hookup apps to find relationships, and engaging in ‘transactional’ sex as an amateur cam-boy.

Since this series is primarily being written for LGBT youth readers, I can foresee some young readers without an avenue to discretely and/or independently purchase these books having a bit of a conundrum in weighing how to explain the premise of these books to their parents if the protagonists are ultimately going to be heading off to create gay porn at the end of each novel— I doubt many teenagers will want to explain to their parents how they came to be familiar with Mitchell— however, more open-minded parents shouldn’t be too alarmed by the content in Saracen’s first novel.

HOWO provides an interesting survey of Mitchell’s experiences as he struggles to grow up as a bisexual teen, and ultimately escape the lull of a conservative small town. Though I would have liked to see more coverage of Mitchell’s earlier years, Saracen’s writing held my attention, and I look forward to reading her next book in the series.

I did not really like this book. Apparently it is fiction based on a real person, Blake Mitchell, who is a porn star in real life. I have no background on Blake and his story so all I know about him is from reading this book. Blake is a bisexual high school student who has fallen in with a bad crowd at school. His circumstances are not good to begin with but as he tries to navigate high school, he really makes some poor choices that contribute to his situation as well. I guess it was the writing that made me dislike this book because it is all over the place with many different characters moving around from chapter to chapter, while not really solidifying the plot or being able to connect with characters. The depiction of teenage boys here is kid of sad actually making them seem to only be interested in drinking, smoking pot and getting laid. Kind of sad. Maybe I expected more because this is supposed to be based on somebody's real life and I just felt like I didn't learn much about him at all. Maybe the next book in this possible series will fare better.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this in exchange for an honest review. Normally I'd say "review to come upon release" but I got this one after release date, so my review gets to go live pretty much immediately! :)

I enjoyed this book. I didn't love it. It had a lot of flaws, mostly the real lack of a driving force behind the book. We all knew where it ended up - his career at Helix Studios, since it's based off of a true story - but the path there felt less like a story and more like tidbits or chunks of seemingly unrelated sections of his life. Overall, it was still entertaining, but it was hard to watch him train wreck through his life before he found success. Over and over he made such bad decisions that it made it hard to root for him at all, and honestly, other than Blake, very few of the other players in his story felt fleshed out enough to matter. Same with his situations... we'd get a few chapters on each, and then bam, move on to the next bit. It almost felt like multiple short stories in an anthology, rather than one big story.

Worth a read, but don't go in expecting it to be the best MM you've read all year. I did want a little more naughty too, rather than all the fade to black scenes. :P

this was an ok read.

Blake had a string of awful luck and he keeps on chugging along. I just never really felt a connection with this story. At all. I'm not sure what we were supposed to "get" from this story.

I could not get into this book at all and DNF'd it at around a third of the way through. The characters - three or four kids in high school - were such utter dicks that there wasn't a single one of them that was even likeable, let alone relatable. I read in some other reviews that it's apparently a fictionalized version of a true story. I did not realize that going in, but now I do know it, I have to wonder what the purpose of this treatment of it was supposed to be.

Thinking it was fiction, I was pulled in by the fact that the main character was bisexual. This is rare in a book and the only other such book I've read that immediately comes to mind, I didn't like very much. I'd hoped for a lot more for this one, especially given the positive nature of the title, but it was a fail for me because although the main character was presented as bi, he had no real interest in women at all, aside from his ex-girlfriend. His entire focus seemed to be on men, so while he was technically bi, this story really offered nothing that your typical gay high school story offers, so what was the point?

Again from what I read in other's reviews after I decided to ditch this as a waste of my reading time, the 'way out' is for the main character to go into the porn industry which, while it's entirely his choice to make, is hardly the kind of way out that the high-flying title suggested to me. It's hardly an heroic option, and it's not inventive, or unique or original. I was hoping for a lot more and was sadly disappointed when I learned that this was his 'way out'. After reading those other reviews, I was glad I did not try to read further than I did.

As for my own take on it, I found nothing here to inspire or interest me. The guy was a jerk, unlikeable and with nothing to offer the reader. It was a tedious read. He just bounced around between parties, doing drugs and drinking, with no ideas in mind for any sort of a future. The limited and boxed-in mindset was simply depressing and uninteresting. The guy behaved like a loser and showed no sign of improving. He was boorish and one-track-minded, and I saw no saving graces in him and nothing educational or even original in his thought processes. Whether the reality upon which this was apparently based is different, I can't say, but I can only believe that a biography would have been far more fulfilling than this fiction ever can be. I cannot commend this as a worthy read based on what I experienced of it.

The whole concept of this book is intriguing. I know who Blake Mitchell is (a gay porn star with Helix Studios who is pretty vocal on social media about being bisexual) and I saw him post about this book on Instagram which is why I requested it from NetGalley in the first place. This book was published by a sister company of Helix Studios which features a fictionalized Blake Mitchell as the main protagonist. Intriguing, right?

At first I had high hopes for this book as bisexual teen boys are not an identity commonly seen in Books. It starts off good where he’s just trying to figure out high school and being bullied and whatnot, but then the plot just kind of spirals into nothingness. There are way too many drugs and alcohol scenes in this book that it just gets so repetitive and boring. The main character just kind of bounces from one drug induced misfortune to the other. I have no idea if there is any parallels between book character Blake Mitchell and the actual human, but for his own sake I hope not.

I got an ARC of this book.

So I was pretty excited for a book about a bi teen pulling himself up by his boot straps to get out of his dead end town. Those novels usually hit me hard. It is so hard to find a book about a bi man. I want so much more about bi people, but this book fell so far below what I was expecting.

Within the first 10% it was pretty obvious that Blake was misogynistic. If I heard him call someone a "pussy" again, I would probably scream. Him and his friends, who it is never clear why they are friends at all, are all pretty useless. They do nothing but smoke weed and drink alcohol underage. They whine they can't get laid. They are the 2D view of teenage boys that I never wanted. I kept thinking it would pick up with time, it did not. 

I realized about half way through that this book would just tell me Blake was bisexual 100 times, but give me no real emotions or indications about it other then shouting it at me. Blake slept with only men (outside of one really weird scene with his ex-gf that was so easy to forget because it was never mentioned again), he only paid attention to men (except in the first chunk of the book where he actively "seduced" his ex-gf despite her having a boyfriend and her dumping him), and he pretty much just came out as bi as a way to show him bonding with others who then were promptly written out of the book. SO many characters came and went before they were fleshed out. Suddenly characters would be pulled in to save the day despite never being mentioned before. Then bam, they were gone. So that is either really bad writing or the main character really was that heartless of a person. 

Blake is a drug addict that won't admit he is a drug addict. He had a habit of snorting Adderall and he smoked weed in pretty much every scene in the book. It was ridiculous how much weed was in the book. There was no plot, but there was a ton of weed. Blake had no character development. His only traits were constantly being yelled about: his bisexuality, his abs, and his large penis. He managed to be a porn star and a cam star, but the book managed to not have a single sex scene that had any details to it.

This book overall was a flop. I couldn't care less about the characters, there was no plot, there was no substance. This book felt entirely useless. I found out that it was commissioned by Helix Studios about one of their models. I am even less likely to use their site now that I have read this story. I would link to them, but I am on my work computer.

Blake is a young prospective man who has all these plans for his life, choices made in his younger years now affect this future. Some for the better and others not so much.

It took me awhile to get into this book, though once I started I couldn't put it down. I am aware who Blake Mitchell is and so was intrigued if there was validity in the narrative told. I enjoyed the three act story told; Junior, Senior and Adulthood, it helped to understand who Blake was and connected you to this world of his.

I requested an ARC of this book because I sometimes like to read Gay Lit (as opposed to Gay Romance). This is definitely not a romance. I was hoping the author provided some information on the origin of the plot at the back of the book, but there was nothing there in my copy. From the publisher's notes, I gather this may be the fictionalized life story of an adult entertainer.

I kept putting it down, then picking it back up. I was oddly fascinated by Blake's childhood. We meet him as a high school teen and follow along with him as life knocks him around time after time. Some hard knocks are self inflicted, while others are completely random. You could make a case for everything bad being a result of poor decisions by the protagonist. But, honestly, I've never met anyone with so few second chances in life. I think many of us wouldn't be the adults we are today if we hadn't been given second chances in our youth.

In spite of arguably poor decisions, Blake has many positive qualities. He's smart, driven, sociable, and most importantly, he has a sense of self worth that never allows him to give up. His self-motivation in the face of so many roadblocks left me in awe.

The ending felt like a bit of a cliffhanger. I have no idea if his story will be continued or whether the series will move on to another character as the publisher states in their notes.

There is no romance in this book. There are hookups and friendships and family, and even a relationship or two, but absolutely no romance. Sex is mostly fade to black.

---Cringe worthy, brutal honesty coming up.---

The reason it took me so long to get through this book is because the writing is sub par. It's a fascinating story told very badly. The plot lacks cohesiveness. We tumble from one hard-knock for Blake to another with little indication of the passage of time.

Forget trying to figure out who's talking. Other than the text conversations where the characters' names are provided for each line, there is no way to tell when one character stops talking and another starts. I never knew who was saying what.

The formatting and editing issues will hopefully be cleared up for the final copy of the book. I tend to ignore them in an ARC copy. But, it was more than formatting that kept me from really connecting. I struggled to read the story. I wanted so badly to get lost in the plot, but I was held at arms length by the lack of flow and consistency.

---Bitch out---

I'm glad I read "Blake's" story. I wish I could go back in time and offer him all the second chances he was denied as a young adult. I hope he's rich and happy with his life even though it didn't turn out as he'd originally planned.

2.5 stars rounded up because my inner momma duck wishes this had been one of my ducklings

I know some may really like this story, but I have to admit to not finishing it, which I very rarely do.
I was invested in the beginning, but as Blake continues to mess up, time after time after time, I just wanted to slap him.
I know stories like this happen in real life, and I think the author did a good job. This just isn't my cup of tea.

***ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley in exchange for honest review.***

His Own Way Out is the first in the Rise Up series commissioned by Helix Studios. This book features Blake Mitchell (one of my fav Helix models) and his journey from a high school junior to his start in the adult entertainment industry.

There were many different characters introduced along the way, and it was hard to get a feel for many of them.. There was one constant friend throughout, Greg, and many hit or miss friends and lovers. I'm not sure how true to Mitchell's life the story is, but if it's accurate, I can understand why the book hops from one scene to the next without establishing plot or character development for me to make a connection.. I also had trouble connecting with Mitchell's feelings as he experiences ups and downs. I felt very detached from the story from the beginning to the end..