Mr HIV by I.b. Freeman (Smokkee's first book review!)

Hello WORLD! Here's my first book review and I'm proud to say that it is a very fine first effort from an up & coming writer I'm sure you'll be hearing more about in the near future (in one aspect or another) I.B. Freeman. I'm also happy to mention he's a friend of mine as well! Even if he was my worse enemy, I'd still say BUY THIS BOOK!! and I'll explain why after I give you a brief description of the book. But before THAT, one last brief message: HIV is out there so get tested!
The story is pretty straight forward. The story revolves around Darren Wade, a young African American who, SPOILER ALERT HERE! contracts the HIV virus. Kidding about the spoiler; if you didn't know the main character had "the monster"(what one character descibes the virus as), then obviously you didn't read the title of the book. Giving anything else a way would be considered spoiling, although it can't be that far of a stretch to guess where this is going. Then again, most of the previews I've read give away the main focal point of the story. The backcover does as well. But knowing what direction you're heading and where you actually end up is not necessarily the same thing, now is it? This book does a couple of 360s here & there and then lowers the boom. I'd better stop here before I go into anymore details.
Now I'm about to talk about DETAILS! LOL! Before I do that, I'd like to mention here that I read this book, which is 300+ pages,in 1 day and a few times more after that. Back to the details: I'll admit I had a small problem with the storytelling at first because of details but then I came to realize maybe this was done intentionally. You see, other than Darren and his doting mother are the only two characters you get a complete picture of throughout the entire book, and even they seem a little like composite characters. At first, this did not sit well with me. I mean the characters kept changing on me. At a few points, Darren kept reminding me of different people I've met over the course of my life but it wasn't until Darren started reminding me of a few friends I still have around me now that I started to get the way this book was written. I'm mean this book goes lite on the character's details and heavy on other details, REAL heavy in some cases. In detail, this book covers various illness and sicknesses associated with HIV as well as enough of the concoctions of life-extending drugs that you got a pretty clear idea what names you see should be looking for on them medicine bottles & packages if you go searching through a sex partner's medicine cabinet (SPOILER ALERT: This actually happens in the book, too!). By the time I realized that I DID know most of the characters & they were MEANT to be like composite characters, I was already hooked. I think Mr. Freeman wrote this book with this intention; maybe you are suppose to recognize these characters as friends or maybe even yourself because these people ARE your friends....or even you! That's why I STRONGLY suggest you get this book. A sidenote: this book is graphic but not too dirty, too dirty meaning like maybe a story by Zane. I say children from ages 12 and up should be required to read this book, even with the graphical descriptions; I'm sure in this day and age the school lot talk is probably more advanced than I remember and we had some of the rawest mouths THEN! There are people in this WORLD like Darren out here and people like Darren who don't even know they're like Darren because they haven't gotten tested yet. Sad but true... Hell, I just got tested back in January and I'm seriously thinking about getting tested again today when I go in for my checkup. Actually I was getting another test anyway.
By the way, the ONLY people I don't recommend this book to is a hypochondriac; there would be no joy for them by the end of the book, it's that many details about the aforementioned illnesses.
Everybody else, BUY THIS BOOK! Oh, yeah, AND GET TESTED!!!