You need this in your life if:
- You’re a sucker for the fake boyfriend trope
- You love self-deprecating humor and characters who mess up
- You love opposites attracting 😉
- You want a heavy dose of British wit
- You miss Alex and Henry from Red, White and Royal Blue
Review:
You can tell a book is going to be a good one when you find yourself cackling multiple times and the pages flying by while you do it. Boyfriend Material was one of those books. The dialogue and banter in this book? Pure gold.
As you would probably expect from a British comedy, there are loads of characters that are just so particular in their ways, you can’t help but crack up whenever they grace the pages. From Luc’s colleagues from work who try their best to understand and make jokes that fail spectacularly to Oliver’s peculiar group of friends who are overbearing but have their heart in the right place and should most definitely be kept away from alcoholic beverages, there were just a lot of moments that made me cackle. Sure, sometimes the humour is very pointed and exaggerated but it all feels natural to the characters. In all honesty, it reminded me a lot of the humour from one of my favourite sitcoms of the 90s, The Nanny. As long as you take some of the comments with a grain of salt, I think you’ll enjoy the humour, too!
And the characters, oh how I loved the characters in this one. Oliver is this high-strung, straight-laced person who is just too good for this world. And then we have Luc, who’s been in the press his entire life just because of a second-rate superstar for a father and has to deal with the pressures that come with that private life being splashed across the tabloids whenever he missteps. I just loved these two very opposing characters deciding to fake date to appease someone they’re trying to keep off their backs and the conversations between them had me in stitches. From Oliver’s face-palming moments whenever he texts Luc to their discussions of Luc’s messiness and overall disregard for any ethical issue ever all while trying to figure out whether their feelings are more than just for show, every interaction just kept me so invested in how it was all going to end!
The storyline following Luc’s father reaching out to him to try and rekindle a nonexistent relationship was also so well done and left me just as heartbroken as Luc must have felt. There is a lot of discussion surrounding what makes a parent good or bad and it definitely tugged at my tear ducts watching Luc open himself up and being vulnerable faced with someone who has inadvertently made his life incredibly difficult.
With that said, this book also had quite the cinematic feel to it! The descriptions of the places Luc takes the reader, from his mother’s home to the vegan restaurant he meets clients at, just flowed really nicely and painted a picture in my mind.
The only caveat I really have with the book is the discussions surrounding vegetarianism and veganism. Being neither of those, I didn’t even pick up on the offensive descriptions and comments sprouting in this book until I read reviews from other people who relegated their own feelings about this. In hindsight, I think what I read as part of the pointed humour I talked about, definitely could be considered derogatory and therefore I feel like there needs to be fair warning that there’s some cajoling into eating meat (even though the vegetarian in the book voices the desire himself) and more than a few digs at vegans and vegetarians that could have been handled better.
All in all, Boyfriend Material is a laugh-out-loud story about a hot mess of a guy fake-dating his polar opposite to save his reputation, a book that brings all the feels and will surely keep you flipping those pages late into the night!
Boyfriend Material is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of July 7th 2020.
Will you be picking up Boyfriend Material? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | 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.
I did not like Red, White and Royal Blue initially but it in retrospect I do miss Alex and Henry and if this is anything like that book, its going straight to my TBR