I was expecting Yes, Daddy to be an erotic thriller - it's actually more a coming-of-age confessional.

Jonathan Parks-Ramage's debut novel is, at times, gripping, and it does a beautiful job of giving a heartbreaking glimpse into the other side of the #metoo movement - the blatant abuse of young, gay men.

Jonah was a difficult character for me to get fully behind. While he's definitely sympathetic, I also found him to be not terribly likeable... though I think that was intentional on the author's part, as we learn so much more about Jonah's mindset in the final third of the book.

I did feel this story frequently became too preachy. There were untold pages of God and religion and scripture. I also felt some sections ran too long; they became repetitive and mildly boring. Overall, though, a strong debut offering.

**Rape plays a key role in this story, so if that happens to be a trigger for you, I'd suggest skipping this one.

Available May 18, 2021.

My sincere thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for my review copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC of this book!

Yes, Daddy is a tough read, full of abuse and trauma and finding the will to go on.

I think there are some incredibly important elements to this story. We see our main character, Jonah, deal with trauma from the time he's a young child and he's forced into conversion therapy. We see him deal with it at the hands of a man he'd convinced himself he loved and love him in return. We see it in so many different other ways in this story, and I don't want to spoil it, but here's the take: the way our society deals with victims of trauma and abuse is a direct link to why that trauma and abuse puts some on a path to self-destruction. We see that with Jonah in this story. It's so incredibly hard to root for him at times, but it really begs the question - can you blame him?

I really enjoyed this story for the first part of the book. It was riveting and infuriating, and I do actually think what happens in this book is something that happens more than we're privy to. It's an important conversation that not enough people are having on 1) - how do we support LGBTQ youth who are struggling and make the perfect prey for predators? and 2) - how do we teach all youth to recognize the sign of those predators in older men and women and to offer the appropriate support if and when they're captured by them? Like I said, a lot of important elements here.

Unfortunately, the last part of the book took a bit of a left turn for me. There's a lot here about religion and God and while that's fine in general, I do not like the thought that religion and God can cure the suffering of the abused or that God's love and forgiveness are all you need. I don't think that was the point here, but it swerved awful close to that territory and I just was not a fan of the end. There are a number of other things I wish had happened, but alas. I am not the author and I think the author wrote the story he wanted, which is what an author should do.

If you decide to pick this book up, please note the trigger warnings of rape, physical and mental abuse, rape of a minor child, suicidal ideation, suicide, homophobia, conversion therapy.

Thank you Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this EARC in return for an honest review.
Jonah is an aspiring playwriter who is down on his luck when he decides to form a plan to become a part of Richard's life. Richard is a successful playwriter and if Jonah could just connect with him he knows he can warm his way into Richard's heart, bank account, and lavish lifestyle. Jonah's plan worked but Richard has other and more sinister plans for Jonah.
This book is told in first person and in multiple timelines throughout Jonah's sad and tragic life. This book is heavy! There is a lot to unpack. Take breaks from it if you need to but finish the book! Thanks to the author for writing such a powerful book. I look forward to reading more of your work.

So I'll preface this review by saying that this book contains depictions of rape and sexual assault. If that's something that is triggering to you, I would avoid this book. Once the plot got moving, I finished this book in a 2 hr plane ride because I had to see how it ended. In this time of #metoo, it's interesting to read a book written from the POV of a gay man and the power dynamics at play when he starts dating an older, more famous man. What happens when he starts relying on his partner for money? My only complaint would be to have a more succinct ending. I felt like it just ended.

Yes, Daddy caught my attention with its description as a "scorching modern gothic" exploring themes of classism, power dynamics, victimization and complicity. I was immediately hooked! So many red flags flying everywhere as the main character, Jonah, strikes up a relationship with an older playwright Richard. Jonah, himself an aspiring playwright struggling to make ends meet in NYC, accompanies Richard to the Hamptons where he finds himself struggling to fit in. The story opens with a rape trial in 2011, where Jonah has been asked to testify against Richard, and then goes back to 2009 and the beginning of Jonah and Richard's relationship. The writing, like the plot, is intoxicating.

This book is hard to review. It started off okay and then the book lost its self and then lost me. All of the main characters were unlikable and I'm still not sure if that was on purpose or by design. It felt like the book wanted to say something but couldn't find the right words, and so by the end, there was nothing it could say. Which, unfortunately, leaves me without much to say.

This is a gripping examination of the intersection of trauma, faith, sexuality, healing and forgiveness. It’s a lot to take on, but I think it was well done. The nightmarish horror sequence in the Hamptons was difficult to read, and I hate to think that it was based on a real-life situation. However, as we continue to find out in this “me too” era, people in positions of power get away with all kinds of abuse. I also found the exploration of what it means to be gay and Christian refreshing; not many contemporary novels are willing to address faith-based issues in such a direct, realistic way. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Dark and haunting, intensely gripping, terrifying. I felt like I was taken through so much reason this book, my responses to what was happening swinging left and right. I’m not quite sure if I “like” all of it. But it was good and I couldn’t stop reading, so that’s saying something about Parks-Ramage’s writing for sure. I’m sure this book will sit with me for a good long while.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC of Yes, Daddy. This book was really well written and dealt with extremely heavy subject matter. Parts were hard to get through due to some personal triggers but after recollecting myself a few times, I was able to power through and am glad that I finished it. I would definitely warn people to be aware of potentially triggering content before reading, but I think the description of the book does a good job of letting readers know what to expect (though the book does get much more graphically detailed than I had anticipated, and delves deeply into the psychological state of the main character in ways that can feel shocking at times). Overall the author realistically portrayed trauma, and I think that is so important. Great book from an Own Voices author, who delves into abuse, trauma, religion, and the Me Too movement, while depicting something that so often gets ignored - that men can be and often are victims of violence and abuse.

Trigger warnings for rape, sexual abuse, physical abuse, self-harm and suicide follow. Also, spoilers.

Wow… this dark novel of fantasy gone horribly wrong hits the ground running and never stops. The novel gets dire quickly and continues on a brutal path until the very end.

Jonah is a broke young man, barely making it as a waiter in an NYC restaurant known for its closeted-celebrity clientele. His boss is an asshole, and his job thankless. He is expected to deal with the patrons whose hands stray across his body or even outright grab him, all in the name of making these celebrities feel at home.

However, Jonah, who is also a budding playwright, engineers an encounter with Richard, an older openly-gay playwright whom Jonah believes can give him a leg up in the industry while also pro diving him with love and comfort and a life of luxury.

How wrong he is.

I don’t wish to spoil the rest of the novel, but the trigger warnings above are not to be taken lightly. This novel is painfully dark and will make your skin crawl.

That is not to say anything poor about the writing - it is superb! and the story is unlike any other that I have read before. I expect this book to be a success and I expect that we will be hearing a lot more from Mr. Parks-Ramage.

This book is hard to rate, because it is in three distinct parts. It's also a bit tricky to review, because almost anything feels like a spoiler.

The first part (which is the first 2/3 of the book) is a distinct gothic horror, an escalating sense of unease and building tension. It is sad, and frustrating and moving. It focusses on Jonah, a gay man living in New York who has an evangelical Christian upbringing and what happens to him when he gets involved with a famous playwrite. (5/5)

The second part gets very Christian very fast, and then rolls to an abrupt and shocking conclusion. It started to feel to me like the author had not planned how to resolve the issues from the first part. (3/5)

The final part was the shortest, but also strangest. The book had been slowly turning epislotolic and it completes that transition, although writing letters that will never be sent is basically like writing in a diary. This section also just tells a whole story about Jonah's Dad that I didn't need to know, and that does not feel consistent with the rest of the book.(2/5)

So it was a bit of a roller coaster. I would definitly read another book by Jonathan Parks-Ramage, because this started out very strongly. I wish it had kept up that level of plotting and writing.

Thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the free copy in exchange for an honst review.

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Yes, Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage is a thrilling, subtly gothic, and at time terrifying novel of trauma, and the lengths people will go to to survive that trauma. I loved this book and I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a dark, queer, and quick read.

Following Jonah, an aspiring writer who is down on his luck and at risk of falling through the cracks of Ney York City's constantly moving creative machine, the novel centers on Jonah's ambition to raise himself up toward stardom by conveniently crossing paths with Richard, a high-level writer and producer. Little does Jonah know, this meeting with change the course of his life forever and in ways he cannot fathom.

The primary focus of this novel is its elements of gothic terror. I was genuinely unsettled by this book and its subtle and overt elements of horror. The moments of intense terror are bright and startling, with the more insidious elements of emotional and psychological manipulation being subtly chilling.

As a queer novel, Yes, Daddy was a phenomenal look into the structure of the gay scene in New York and the ways in which queer male power dynamics manifest themselves. As a thriller/horror novel, however, those power dynamics are ultimately skewed in the direction of the grotesque, the horrifying, and the violent. Mystery abounds in this novel, and like any good writer, Parks-Ramage leaves unsettling clues for the reader that all is not what it seems before his main character realizes the danger he could be in.

Parks-Ramage's representation of mental illness (anxiety/depression/PTSD) was exceedingly striking. As much as this novel exhibits the exaggerated horror of the Gothic, the text is grounded in the real. Taking his ques from real events, Parks-Ramage tells a story of complicated victimhood, and of the systemic issues that abusers take advantage of when searching for people to victimize. However, Yes, Daddy is also a story of redemption and rising above suffering in ways that are unexpected.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It's a book about a dumb twink and his relationship with a sugar daddy, and we know it's going to end poorly because the very first scene is a flash forward. The book tries to be three different things at the same time: a drama about abuse, a thriller, and a porno, but isn't convincing as any of those. ⁠
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The book doesn’t even attempt to gently imply Richard's real nature, it just slams it in your face: he acts abusively every once in a while and Jonah pretends it's perfectly normal. ⁠
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Thriller-wise, I was hoping for a big reveal in which Jonah turns out to be even sneaker and worse than Richard, but it doesn't come--the plot is exactly what the blurb says it is. Throughout, I kept remembering that awkward couple from "Meet my daddy" videos people were talking about a while back on YouTube. ⁠
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The only thing I enjoyed were the elements of second-person narration and Jonah speaking directly to the other victim. It kind of grounded the story and made it slightly more realistic. My point is, I feel like the story dramatized abuse and made it this big organized Hollywood thing with secret basements and evil parties and conspiracies instead of portraying it realistically. ⁠
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I was hoping Jonah would grow as a character and do something (anything). Quite early in the book, after a very serious scene of group rape, he decides to get back together with Richard because it's easier than figuring out how to get home and pay rent?! His narration becomes overly logical, and yet I don't understand what his motivation is. I don't think the author knew, either, it was just a good enough reason to just continue with the plot. What about some psychological tension between Jonah and Richard, then? Nope. ⁠
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It's nice that they go SHOPPING though 🤷 ⁠
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All in all, I expected a balanced and realistic story of a relationship turning abusive OR a summer thriller but what I was offered instead was a mediocre porn script with an ending that attempts to be deep. If survivors of abuse keep being portrayed like this, we will never get over that 'blame the victim' culture.

I have never read a book like this before. It’s very dark and very disturbing. How much misery can one person take? Jonah is a gay man living in New York hoping to find love. He has formulated a plan and he is going to go after what he wants. But what he finds is some thing no one would have imagined.

I was captivated right from the beginning of this book. It is heartbreaking and devastating. It’s such a fast book to read. Once you start you just don’t want to put it down.

This book has multiple trigger warnings. Rape, domestic abuse and violence.

Thank you NetGalley for this ebook.

I didn’t have any expectations going in to this book. The cover is gorgeous and the synopsis sounded intriguing. This book was so much more then I expected. From the very first chapter I was hooked.

This book was about a young man named Jonah and his story that begins with meeting a rich older playwright and the torture he goes through at his hands. There are definite trigger warnings for sexual assault, so make sure to look them up if you need to.

Overall, I loved this story. The middle does get a little long, but I think it was needed in order to get to where we do at the end.

Thank you to NetGalley for the e-ARC for my honest review.

4 Stars!

I really cannot believe this was a debut. Talk about some smart, witty, and powerful writing. From the moment I came across this book on NetGalley, I was intrigued. At first, from that title, I assumed it was going to be about some M/M BDSM naughtiness... and there definitely is some of that in here, but this book is soooo much more than that. Fans of My Dark Vanessa should DEFINITELY have this book on their radar.

"...In a building that had been advertised on Craigslist as a 'hip artist loft in the heart of Bushwick,' although 'gutter-trash shithole in the ass-crack of hell' seemed a more apt description."

We meet Jonah who is an aspiring writer trying to make it on his own in NYC. He's barely making ends meet...like, he struggles to make his rent on a monthly basis despite working as much as he can and picking up extra shifts. He comes across Richard Shriver online who is a wealthy screenwriter, author, and successful playwright, and is quickly able to surmise that he is exactly Richard's type. So, he devises a plan to seduce him.

That's about all I'm going to disclose. What ensues from there is a plan gone horribly wrong and an unfolding of events that kept me glued to the pages and invested in these characters.

I usually don't mention triggers but I think I will here. For this book, they include: homophobia, sexual abuse, mental illness, suicide.

In this #metoo era, this is a look from another angle of the issue and a crucial one. This book shook me to my core and made me wonder fear how much of this happens in real life.

I do wish that we could have seen Jonah [ find love in a relationship for himself. (hide spoiler)] For me, this would have been the final piece of the puzzle in his journey towards healing.

I saw on the author's IG page that Amazon will be adapting this story into a television series and I cannot wait!! It will make a fantastic one.

Yes, Daddy is a raw story about victimhood and what can follow. The author pulls no punches in this stunning debut with his razor sharp writing and storytelling ability. My heart broke for Jonah and the other men of the compound. I am still thinking about this book days after finishing it. Jonathan Parks-Ramage is an instant author to take notice of and I cannot wait to read more of his work.

Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this Advanced Review Copy which I received in exchange for an honest review.

This is definitely not the book I thought it would be based on the description. I thought this would be a modern Gatsby type story, but it’s nothing even remotely close.

I read 67% and then I had to stop. It is too graphic for me and it does not have any redeeming qualities. The writing is mediocre, I can’t stand any of the characters, and it just disgusted me, completely.

I did enjoy the first part of the story - the “I’m stalking a famous playwright so he’ll fall in love with me” part. After that, it went downhill - and quickly.

A propulsive, scorching modern gothic, Yes, Daddy follows an ambitious young man who is lured by an older, successful playwright into a dizzying world of wealth and an idyllic Hamptons home where things take a nightmarish turn.

“Wow. Jonathan Parks-Ramage’s debut novel, Yes,Daddy, is thought-provoking, disturbing, and emotional commentary on the power dynamics in a relationship and how easy it is to find yourself powerless. It’s a fascinating look at #MeToo from a gay man’s perspective.”

Jonah Keller is a young man, who moves to NYC from a small Illinois town, with the dreams of becoming a playwright.
Richard Shriver, a famous and award winning playwright. Jonah orchestrâtes a way to meet him. Hoping to seduce the older man and possibly jumping starting his own career with Richard by his side.

Jonah’s well researched plan works and they begin a lustful and turbulent affair, although Richard is a mercurial man to deal with. When summer comes around his invited to spend the summer with Richard and his famous friends in the Hamptons. Things intensify, there’s alcohol, waiters who are all young, beefy gay men and drugs. What could go wrong?

Things take a dark turn when Richard breaks up with Jonah. He realizes that there is something far more sinister happening at the compound and finds out why he is really invited in the first place. Jonah can’t stop thinking about dangerous revenge.

“The book is not even out yet, and Amazon Studios has announced an adaptation.”

“Riveting, unpredictable, and compulsively readable, Yes, Daddy is an exploration of class, power dynamics, and the nuance of victimhood and complicity. It burns with weight and clarity–and offers hope that stories may hold the key to our healing.”

Perfect for fans who loves K.M. Szpara writing style with a dash of Adam Silvera.
Can’t wait for Parks-Ramage’s new work 🙌🏻

Jonah is a young waiter, struggling with aspirations of being a writer. He sets out to meet Richard, a famous playwright, who appears to have a history of dating younger men so Jonah decides to shoot his shot. As the relationship progresses, soon the perfect boyfriend and couples trip turns into a nightmare of epic proportions.

There were some very heavy subject matters in this book so be mindful to read the CW first.

There were moments I had to step back from the brutality and realness of it all. It was, at times, difficult to read but I haven’t read a book like this before and it has stayed with me and opened my eyes to things I couldn’t have imagined. I appreciated the take on the MeToo movement highlighting the difficulties young men face when speaking out against their abusers.

This book is so well written and powerful. It’s not an easy one but I feel like it’s an important one.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free arc. All opinions are my own.

QUICK TAKE: fair warning, this book is extremely dark and provocative. Following a young playwright who sets his sights on climbing the industry ladder by any means necessary who gets in way over his head when he makes a move on an older, established playwright. The book is full of graphic sexual content, including sexual assault, but is also a complex look at a story and characters that feels closer to real life than it should. The last 1/3 of the book gets a little bogged down in religious undertones and redemption that seem to be prevalent in a lot of queer fiction, but ultimately I found myself thinking about this book long after I finished.