Review: Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

Boyfriend Material
Alexis Hall
Release: July 7, 2020
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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.

Review: I don't remember when I first heard about this book but I remember some of the early reviews raving about it and several said it was perfect for fans of Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. You all know how much I love RWRB so I immediately went and requested the ARC on Netgalley. This book is the perfect summer read! It's funny and lighthearted and made me squeal with happiness in parts.

I’m not normally a fan of the fake dating trope but I enjoyed the heck out of it in this book. Actually, the whole plot of this book revolved around the whole "we're in a fake relationship but it's becoming real" thing and them progressing from frenemies-to-lovers. It was kind of sweet and I loved the messy and kind of neurotic characters. Luc and Oliver are each a respective mess. Oliver just doesn't look like he is on the outside. They each have a bit of emotional baggage and trauma from some toxic relationships. I loved how their relationship progressed and became real! They were really kind of perfect for each other. The character development for both MCs was pretty awesome. I'm a sucker for the whole opposites attract trope and Luc and Oliver are definitely opposites.

I loved the romance in this book but I think I loved all of the quirky side characters just as much! Luc's friend group was weird and wonderful! Oliver's was a bit more kooky but equally as awesome as Luc's. Luc's mother and her best friend made me laugh so hard. Come for the sweet queer romance and stay for all the secondary characters.
 
As much as I enjoyed this book, it fell just shy of being a five star read for me. The pacing felt a bit wonky for me. I think my biggest critique I have of this book is that with the amount of time on developing Luc and Oliver's "fake" relationship to real, I wish we had gotten more of Luc and Oliver being together together for real and not just together in their “fake” relationship. It could have had another 50 or so pages for that and the pacing would have evened out a bit. There was also this one part in the second half that totally came out of left field and didn't make sense to me. Those two things were why this was only a four star read for me.

I will say this book has a lot of Briticisms in it that won't make sense to a lot of people here in America. The only reason I got a lot of them was because I worked in a lab where everyone except me was from the UK. I found the ones I didn't know easy to google though.

Overall, this book is a perfect book for summer and would easily fit most peoples' definition of a beach read. I highly recommend it!

ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley.

   

  4 / 5 Stars

Book #32- Summer- Read a Book with a Brightly or Multi-Colored Cover  

Recommended for fans of:
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Meet Cute Club by Jack Harmon