Shitty YA Boy Toy: Gideon - RUBY RED

What? It’s Donna’s blog, but it’s not Donna posting? Oh nay nay! It is I, her fabulous cohort in all vehemently emotional things, Nicole! (You know, from WORD for Teens.)

Today, I am here to talk about YA boys who make shitty toys. I consider myself a bit of an expert on the subject – after all, I am rather picky with my men – and I have to say, Gideon from the Edelstein Trilogie?  Well, he just didn’t make the cut.

The story: Gideon is our romantic male lead in Kierstin Gier’s Ruby Red and Sapphire Blue. (And, undoubtedly, Emerald Green, but that’s not out in English yet.) He’s Gwen’s time-traveling partner, her other half, the person a very serious prophecy links her to.

I’m not joking. It’s very serious. So serious that the entire first two books are spent trying to decipher what it means and to fulfill it in some way.

While Gwen tries to figure out what is actually going on within the giant secret society of time travelers – and why they want to use her – Gideon, um…

The good:

Well, Gideon spends a lot of the books looking ridiculously hot. It doesn’t matter what ridiculous period clothes he’s put in; Gideon is hot. If you put bread on him, it would rise. Eggs and bacon would fry for a tasty breakfast. If you put him in New York City, every woman and gay man within a twenty block radius would spontaneously explode from lust.

And without Gideon, Gwen might have died a few times, and he DOES spend the entire story doing whatever she does.

And when he acts like the asshole he is, he makes her best friend Lesley look even better. She comforts Gwen and talks Gwen through Gideon’s asinine ways while Gideon prances off to make out with Gwen’s cousin.

Speaking of Gideon’s asinine ways…

The bad and the ugly:

The only reason Gideon paid any attention to Gwen – we find this out at the end of Sapphire Blue - is because he was ordered to do so. Because it would make her, as a woman, weak and vulnerable and more submissive. He agreed to it and, when Gwen found out, claimed to have fallen in love with her in the process of doing this. (Mind you, they’ve only known each other two weeks.)

And while he had been doing everything he could to make her love him, he was still flirting with her cousin Charlotte behind her back. And when he wasn’t flirting with Charlotte, he was either completely ignoring Gwen or working with the secret society of time traveling nutcases to bring about what may be the second Apocalypse (and what may cost Gwen her life).

What the hell?


At a glance: Supremely attractive time traveler who manipulates the main character to love him while flirting with her cousin and possibly, you know, plotting her demise.

Conclusion: Gideon may not physically threaten Gwen, but between the mental abuse and his blatant disregard for her feelings – and, you know, the whole manipulating her thing – I think I can safely classify Gideon as a class one asshole.

Back to you, Donna.

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