Boyfriend Material: A Book Review

TLDR: 4/5 stars, unnecessary trope of fake-dating, but sweet romance.

I don’t often read gay romance—or any romance for that matter—even though I’ve written one myself. But I’ve seen the cover of this one around so much that I figured I’d give it a go. It’s a story of two gay men in their late twenties who end up fake-dating for both of their benefit. One to help the dung beetle charity he works for and one to bring a date to his parents’ anniversary. The two main characters are both dysfunctional in relationships, and on top of that, one of them has a habit of getting “papped” in bad ways (paparazzi is on his back because his father is a famous musician from the 20th century). One such picture results in donors dropping out from his charity—he gets called a “bad gay”, didn't like that much. In order to remedy it, he figured he’ll fake-date the handsome, clever barrister he’s fancied for a while but thinks has rejected him. And the barrister agrees, because he wants to take someone along to the aforementioned anniversary of his parents.

In my opinion, they may as well have been real-dating from the start. It was very obvious that they were in love with one another from the start, so the romantic confession of real love at the end felt a bit unnecessary. I understand that they’re both afraid of real relationships and this is why they start fake dating, but it felt like they weren’t so scared while they were essentially really dating even when they still pretended to fake-date. They even verbally told each other that they were getting real feelings, and they accepted that without much struggle and continued “fake dating” anyway. I’d say the author only makes them fake date to be able to use it as a trope, because, if you just take that away, they’re just two men dating one another before realizing they actually want to be in a relationship.

The chemistry and relationship between the two main characters was quite cute, I did enjoy their dynamic. They worked in their contrasting personalities and how they interacted with one another. I could find myself in Oliver a bit, since I too almost went to study law in a similar direction (but found my love for writing and the arts was bigger in the end), am into the same kind of person that he is, feel the same way about relationships and even have a similar eye color. And funnily enough, one of the characters in my own gay romance is called “Lucien”.

The other characters were cool too, though they felt a bit flat. Each character was distinct, though, I’ll definitely give the author that. I thought the character of Alex was a fun one, same with most other characters. They worked, but they felt very “character-y” in the sense that they didn’t really feel like they had a life when the main characters weren’t interacting with them.

There were also less mentions of famous British monuments in the book. I thought, because the cover featured them so heavily, that we'd get something like a trip in the London Eye, for example, but that wasn't the case. It was set in Britain––and specifically London––for certain, and while I like that it didn't go the "Ooh, British culture is the Big Ben," I find it odd that all of that is featured so heavily on the cover. As far as plot goes, you could let it play out in literally any big city without much of a change, because even the Welsh culture mentions could be switched out for another culture very easily, it is not central to the plot in any way. But that's just my two cents on the cover design.

Overall, I did have a good time with this book—most of the time. If you want to read a fake-dating book about The Gays, I’m not sure if I can recommend it, but if you just want to read a romance of two guys who’re both haunted by their pasts and trying to date one another, I’d say this is a fairly good one.