Review: Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

ARC provided by publisher through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Boyfriend Material is a super fun fake dating queer romance novel. If any of those are what you are looking for, then you should probably scurry off and pick up this book! Here is the summary from Goodreads:

Wanted:
One (fake) boyfriend
Practically perfect in every way

Luc O'Donnell is tangentially--and reluctantly--famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he's never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad's making a comeback, Luc's back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.

To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship...and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He's a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he's never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.

But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that's when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don't ever want to let them go.

So I have already told you I love this book, now I am going to do that thing where you compliment, criticize, compliment, so you begin and end on the happy notes. I also have a small rant about vegetarians that did not impact my rating but just drives me crazy, and if I don’t put it here, I might explode from having no one to express this too.

I genuinely had a hard time rating this book because I sincerely enjoyed the reading experience, but these two factors (one more than the other) keeps pulling me out of the story very consistently over the course of reading the book so that kind of sustained issue so it seemed to merit a four-star rating overall. The first thing that I encountered was that the book is sort of aggressively conversational. This was not necessarily a bad thing, and this was the less noticeable of the two things that pulled me out of the story, after about the first 10% of the book I mostly stopped noticing the narration. In fairness, this style of narration does also have positives, it certainly contributed to how hilarious the books is, and it helped with the immediacy and the development of our main character, Luc.

The part that pulled me out consistently was that most, if not all, of the side characters, are so incredibly over-the-top that some of them were very hard to suspend your disbelief and keep in the world of the book. This was such a weird one because I did really like most of these characters, and at times I found their eccentricities to be charming and reminiscent of the way in which your closest friends are family are deeply strange people when you really know them well. But there were other times where they just seemed so unbelievable that I was completely pulled out of the story. It was such an issue in part because the two main characters seemed real and vulnerable and tangible, so the occasional contrast to a hurricane of wackiness was jarring. This is not to say that I didn’t like these characters, I did, I just also didn’t fully buy their veracity in the same manner I did for Luc and Oliver. So, at times, the side characters and hilarious and fun, and at times they are over-the-top and annoying.

So I wrote my mini-rant about the choice to have the ethical vegetarian eat bacon, and it was far longer than the situation warranted. I am probably going to write a post about vegetarians in books soon because I clearly have a lot of feelings. Basically, my issue comes down to I personally don’t like vegetarians eating meat being a plot device; I find the choice of meat unrealistic because the long term vegetarians I know (and I admit there must be exceptions even if I do not know them) agree that pork smells the worst, and Olivers gut would be at least slightly in distress due to not having enough of the correct bacteria kicking to help digest bacon. I accidentally had a small amount of pork a few years into being a vegetarian, and that night was certainly not romantic.

Back to the things I deeply enjoyed about this book. The book is consistently and deeply funny. I laughed out loud too many times to count and probably on average found something genuinely funny one every page. When reading this book, prepare to giggle for 400 pages.

Hall handles other emotional reactions exceptionally well too! I felt deeply for Luc and his hardships, I was invested in Oliver and his emotional arc throughout the book, and I cried at least one time. Hall really is excellent at leading the reader through the emotional journey he crafted.

I also thought the plot was very well done; Hall totally follows the path of doing the expected thing earlier than the reader anticipated. This is wonderful, especially with a book that used the fake dating trope. You know the story beats that accompany that trope, and Hall excellently places them and manages to bring you as a reader down a more nuanced and interesting use of this trope than maybe you originally expected.

I particularly loved the relationships between Luc and his parents; I think they were excellently handled. I am not here to spoil anything, but his relationship with his dad is a rollercoaster that I super liked where Hall chooses to go with it. And Luc’s mother was delightful and, at times, over-the-top, but her emotional journey through the book was so solid and helped ground Luc’s story in such a wonderful way.

Of course, I have to talk about Luc and Oliver’s relationship; this is a romance that is the core of the book. I think the love story is incredibly well done. Hall is deft with showing the reader where the characters are emotionally even when the characters are lying to each other or themselves. I was really incredibly invested in how these two would work out together. Hall is excellent at making you care deeply about this relationship. It is such a fun and engrossing love story.

Boyfriend Material will be published on July 7th, 2020, and is available to preorder (or purchase) here!

I recommend this to anyone who wants an excellent romance, who loves the fake dating trope, and to anyone who wants to read queer stories by queer authors. I have read one Alexis Hall in the past, but imagine I will go read more of his back catalog soon!

I gave this book four stars on Goodreads and The StoryGraph.