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A Modern Day Don Juan
Novel chronicles a poignant and comedic excursion into the life of a reprobate and rogue who adores women

Book Reviews

Writer's Digest

Review of Confessions of an Internet Don Juan

What did you like best about this book? The episodes that Cast Hughes recounts in this novel are funny, sometimes moving, memorable sexual exploits. By keeping chapters short and the plot uncomplicated, the author is able to provide the reader with a large cast of characters who navigate with Cast increasingly bizarre situations. Cast is a likable character whose sexual pragmatism is mitigated by his emotional vulnerability, as shown in the chapter on Silly Sam. This was one of my favorite chapters, as Cast has to confront and deal with the specter of mental illness that hangs over the rest of the novel as the reader questions whether or not Cast can be a reliable narrator.

Daniel Jolley's Review of Confessions of an Internet Don Juan
Top 50 reviewer for Amazon.com, Amazon: United Kingdom, and Amazon: Canada.

Confessions of an Internet Don Juan is certainly a different and most entertaining read. It's definitely fiction, but I don't know that I would call it a novel – certainly not in the traditional sense. It is instead a series of confessions (I would call them vignettes because the word "confessions" implies a degree of guilt over improper behavior) by which our narrator, Cast Hughes, describes all of the post-divorce adventures he has had via Internet dating. For a self-described middle-aged failure with a history of mental illness, it's rather astonishing to learn that he has scored more often than a young Wayne Gretzky in Edmonton , mainly with foreign women. Cast does go into some detail on the roller coaster relationship ride he embarked upon after finally divorcing his ex-wife (who was apparently trying to poison him in the last year of their marriage). He doesn't proceed in a purely chronological order, but the overall structure of the book does lead us to an ending – at least insofar as our character's Internet dating days are concerned. There's a lot of humor in this book, as Cast encountered many a freak over the weeks and months following his divorce, from the sad and pathetic waif to outright liars to scam artists – and even a few women whose company he truly enjoyed. I'll just go ahead and tell you that there will be sex scenes, but I found nothing too terribly lurid.

I found Cast to be a somewhat slippery character to grab on to. I can't say I approve of his sowing his wild oats in such a wide-ranging number of fields, and I never got a firm handle on the true nature of his mental problems (although the reader certainly runs into a number of plausibly causative issues in his past). Even when he found the relationship he was after, love in the traditional sense seemed to be something of an after-thought in the story. On the other hand, he's a fairly decent guy for the most part, pretty sympathetic due to his past problems, and refreshingly honest. His humanity is easily revealed upon many an occasion. There is, for example, the case of the glamorous model who turned out to be a poor, starving mother with a disabled child. While he admittedly froze upon discovering this particular situation, Chase does make an effort to help them – and then wonders if he should have done more after the fact. Another poignant scene involves his interaction with a stranger he recognizes as mentally ill in some fashion, forging a connection with a man most of us would ignore. Cast can be naïve, though, sometimes sending money or plane tickets overseas to women he has never met, inviting them to visit him in Florida . This continues even after he's learned a lesson or two about scam artists and their techniques (it's never a good thing to learn that the woman you've been chatting with is the equivalent of a prostitute or – what's worse – a man pretending to be a woman).

Cast has a wonderful and telling theory or summation of men, and I imagine many will think he really hits the nail on the head when he talks about the two driving forces in most men's lives. He does wax philosophical from time to time, offering up several bits of the wisdom and perception he has gleaned from experience. So, as you can see, Confessions of an Internet Don Juan is not some shallow piece of tripe chronicling the sexual conquests of a modern-day great lover. I found the book candid, but not shocking or offensive. Yes, Cast has sex with more than his share of women, but I wouldn't call him a reprobate, and he's certainly no kind of sexual predator. Cast views women as beautiful creatures, not as objects. Shoot, the man doesn't even hold a grudge against his ex-wife, even after she tried to poison him.

In my opinion, the heart of this book isn't about sex at all; instead, it is about the need for companionship along life's journey. As such, you're going to get a lot more food for thought than you might be expecting from these pages, so don't judge this book by the title alone. Confessions of an Internet Don Juan is really a surprisingly worthwhile read.

Kirkus Discovery Review of Confessions of an Internet Don Juan

Cast Hughes is depressed and reeling from a recent divorce from an exotic Egyptian woman. Once a competitive bicycle racer, but now middle-aged and lonely he seeks solace and romance through Internet chat and dating websites. Short pieces dominate the bulk of the book, sketching Cast's encounters with women from around the world—some beautiful, some successful, and some scam artists. There is a Moroccan prostitute, a Lithuanian real-estate mogul, and a Russian school teacher, but they all have one thing in common: They all want to have sex with Cast, some flying halfway across the globe to do so.