Review by Booklist Review
Dickey's three central characters--Chante, a single accountant, Stephan, a single firmware designer, and Darnell, a married attorney and aspiring author--are struggling with love. Chanteis looking for the perfect man and with each relationship finds that the faithful and worthy are missing. Stephan's memories of his father's words and deeds as a lady's man distort his expectations of developing and maintaining a healthy relationship. He matures to acknowledge that relationships require work and fidelity. Darnell's desire to become a writer is threatened by his wife's insistence that he concentrate on his career and not on his writing "hobby." Another woman provides the attention and support he desires but at a cost. These characters' lives become entangled as each deals with feelings and attitudes while learning to appreciate and be appreciated according to new definitions of love and fidelity. This is the most ambitious novel of the best-selling author of Milk in My Coffee [BKL Jl 98], and it truly showcases an African American male voice in a genre dominated by women. --Lillian Lewis
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Dickey's racy comedy of African-American singles and couples will please, and won't surprise, the many fans he won with Milk in My Coffee, Friends and Lovers and Sister, Sister. In Dickey's Los Angeles, everybody who's anybody assumes that all couples cheat, and that nothing feels more divine than a forbidden sexual rendezvous. A trio of first-person narratorsÄStephan, Chante and DarnellÄtell interlocking stories in slick, contemporary chatter: often their talk reads like transcripts of phone sex. Stephan battles the memory of a father who considered the number of his female sexual conquests a measure of manhood. Chante seeks exclusive love from a high-performance stud. Darnell's wife, Dawn, doesn't understand him or his pressing desire to write; that's why he cheats on her with the comely Tammy. In and out of the bedroom, these protagonists' self-serving choices frequently get their hearts broken and leave them little room for insight and redemption. Trying hard to make his characters sexy, Dickey can forget to render them likable, attending instead to their stressful self-doubts and their torrid sexual desires. Though Dickey's numerous jokes about sex toys and organ size grow limp, he sprinkles raw, street-savvy humor on almost every page until the strained denouement. This provocative diversion is just right for summer reading, as lusty partners change places with the regularity of a sunrise and every encounter is rendered with a knowing smirk and a playful wink. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates; author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Three narrators (Peter J. Fernandez, Patricia Floyd, and Ezra Knight) alternate chapters in this he said/she said contemporary romance. Their spirited performances showcase Dickey's (Liar's Game) conversational writing style with its crisp, candid dialog. Featuring a cast of upwardly mobile twentysomething African Americans, Cheaters puts the fast-paced, often frantic singles scene of southern California under a microscope. When he was a child, Stephan Mitchell's deadbeat father advised him to have as many girlfriends as possible and to "love 'em and leave 'em." As an adult, Stephan, apparently taking his father's advice to heart, spends his days designing software and his nights juggling no fewer than three girlfriends. Stephan's male friends, one married and one engaged to be married, also struggle mightily with commitment. In an insightful interview at the end of the audiobook, Dickey explains why he chose to write about "cheaters," comments on the marketing of African American novels, and describes his life as an up-and-coming author. While this sexy program is not for every library patron, Dickey's growing popularity makes it a good choice for most public libraries. Beth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib., OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Dickey's fourth novel easily fulfills the expectations created by his earlier work (Milk in My Coffee, 1998, etc.) and introduces a fresh sobriety to his talent for dialogue and character in a tale of duplicitous love. His people are African-American Los Angelenos in their late 20's with advanced degrees, hard bodies, and substantial sexual appetites, making for plenty of bedroom gymnastics as the novel develops. Stephan, a software designer, lives by the creed his father taught him: 'Find 'em, Fool 'em, Fuck 'em, Forget 'em.' Through the course of the story, he applies this quaint adage to Brittany, Toyomi, and Samantha, but is stopped cold by Chante, an accountant with a major firm, who captures his body and heart. The sex is great, but the two carry healing hearts into their affair, which makes for Dickey's most subtly written pages. The marriage of Darnell and Dawn, friends of Stephan's, is a close second: a lawyer with the FAA, Darnell spends his evenings tapping out a novel while Dawn, hoping for a child, resents the intrusion of her husband's 'hobby' into her plans. With Dawn's indifference to his art, Darnell is deeply attracted to Tammy, a friend of Chante's. In Stephan's life, Luke remains at the periphery, haunted by dreams of the aborted children that line the trail of Stephan's squiring; while from the sidelines of Chante's life, the celibate and insecure Karen lobs acid comments on her friends' sexual lives. In this dense and smoothly done work, each of the characters remains distinct, and heat is generated less by the crackling dialogue than by the inevitable clashes between their ideas about love, loyalty, and commitment. A thoughtful step forward for its author, Dickey's story depicts love as a world of hurt broken up by the hesitant joys available'here and there'to the experienced heart. (Literary Guild and Doubleday alternate selection; author tour)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
