This is one of those rare occasions when the Epilogue not only works brilliantly but adds a whole new dimension to the book which made me want to read it all over again.

There's a lot going on beneath the surface. Take the time to get to know the situation and the characters and, because it's first person POV, remember that the narrator can sometimes be harsher on himself than he needs to be.

Some reviewers have reacted to the blurb, which is understandable. This bit particularly:

"There is one upside to almost getting raped. It proves that you're at least desirable to someone.

Those sentences need to be read with a sardonic tone rather than a heartfelt one. The narrator (and assumably the author's) reaction to rape is by no means condoning it. Perhaps the full quote from the book sums the situation up better after the narrator averted an attempted rape by use of words and threats.

“You're awfully quiet, dear” my mother said in the car on the way home.

“Oh, I'm just a little bit tired, that's all,” I answered.

In fact, I was mulling over the events of that afternoon. Why hadn't I told on Geoffrey? What had tipped the scales? Well, I was not too sure. I truly pitied the guy. It couldn't be easy being him, what with his looks, and his craving for young boys. And like my mother always said: “Nobody deserves to be made a slave. I don't care what they're supposed to have done. It not only degrades the victim, it also degrades us as a society”. I tended to agree with her. If you think that was noble of me, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. There was also a considerable measure of self preservation involved. I would have had to recount the whole sordid affair in embarrassingly intimate details to the police and almost certainly repeat it again publicly in court. The story would have been all over the papers. Who needed this kind of notoriety? School was hard enough without being known as the boy who almost got fucked in the ass. No, thank you very much, it was enough that Geoffrey had believed I was prepared to involve the authorities.

Thoughts of an altogether different nature raged also through my mind. Until today I had paid little attention to my looks. It had come as a surprise to me that my appearance could drive somebody as far as to lose control and throw all caution to the wind. As distasteful as the whole episode had been, it was also kind of flattering in a weird, twisted way. Maybe, I thought, I can make Sean Denham see what Geoffrey Singer had seen.

That quote in the blurb is trying to convey the narrator's attitude to life in general rather than his attitude to rape itself.

In fact, the following shows that not only does he hate the act, but he pities the man who actually commits rape (later in the story) on another character who had made his body freely available to a basketball team:

"If only he had let him. If only he had asked. Instead, the dirt bag had masturbated in him."

The story is, in essence, about a young man gradually developing a sense of what's right and wrong in his society and acting on it. He hates bullies who abuse their power and hurt those who aren't in a position to fight back, on all levels: sexual, psychological and eventually political. ( )

A Dish Served Cold is not an easy story to like at the beginning above all since its main character Andrew comes out like a spoiled little brat despite being almost raped in the first chapter. So, spoiled little brat plus rape and I think most of the readers would be scared out from this book… and they would be probably wrong.

Now, it’s not that Andrew is really a bad guy, it’s only than indeed he is a rich kid without a trouble in his life; even when he comes out to his family and friends he has it easy, basically his mother tells him she already knew and his best friend, and crush, Sean is so kind to tell him that, if he will ever need “something” he is there to help, and no, it was not a double-entendre but the real generous words of a kid that will prove to be a good friend.

Actually this novel is a little bit an “opposite” cinderfellas: Andrew’s mother remarries with a not so nice man who brings living with them two sons; on the contrary of the most famous step-sisters, Dan and Davey are not plotting together against their stepbrother, but instead Andrew becomes almost a protector of little Davey. Unfortunately Andrew’s golden existence crushes down when his mother dies leaving him in the care of his stepfather, who of course has not Andrew’s best interest in mind.

The novel is set in an undefined near future, a totalitarian society where endured workers (a nicer name for slaves) is again an ordinary event. Problem is that the reprimanding for violent act has become a normal expedient for people to “eliminate” undesirable people, and ending a slave is even too easy.

As I said Andrew is not exactly a nice boy, but in the end he is not the villain; even when he should have reason to react with violence, he is able to see the reason behind another man action (see his reaction to the rape attempt) and only when his life, and that of the people he loves, are threatened, only then he will arrive to extreme actions, only to expiate for them in his own way soon after that. Andrew is not a saint, don’t get me wrong, but sometime the best people arrive from the worst experiences.

There are only two points I’m not sure I completely liked: the sex something was even too graphic, and all the descriptions related to the enduring processes too detailed, above all when they were regarding people not directly involved in the story. Even if Andrew gives hope again to a lot of people, still I was sad for who he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help.

Another point that made me think was that maybe these young men were “too” young to act as they did. 15, 17, barely 18, all the main characters of this story are teenager, some of them young “adult”, but for sure not grown men, and they didn’t act like that, aside maybe for Sean, Andrew’s best friend. Even Davey, with his taking care of their new-born stepbrother, was more like a child playing home with a doll. But then this is not our reality, this is sometime in the future and moreover is the life of a privileged part of society; so what is normal for me can be not the same for them.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004A8ZVRA/?tag=elimyrevandra-20