[Review] Boyfriend Material - Alexis Hall

Summary: 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. (Pub Date: Jul 04, 2020)

From enemies to fake lovers.

Luc needs to improve his image or he'll lose his job. This makes him desperate enough to accept going on a date with goody-two-shoes Oliver, who has dismissed him already in the past. After the disaster that date proved to be, he finds out Oliver too needs to find a partner, even if it's a fake one. Quickly, the limits become blurry.

My first impression was that there were too many jokes and that the narration sidetracked too much, summing up to what is probably a longer book than necessary. However, the story and the characters made up to what looked like a surplus and eventually became a bonus, because I really needed to get more of this delightful book.

And wow, I'm not sure how Alexis Hall was so on point building Luc. He's unbearably cranky and can't hold his tongue, he's always suspecting everyone too—and he's not wrong to, unfortunately—, which doesn't help his mood. I think his was not a main character that was easy to create, control and show the readers while still getting our empathy. Oliver would be more what we're used to, but still very lovely. I'd totally marry him if I could and while it was well explained why he couldn't hold on to a boyfriend, I'd still be up for the challenge.

Just a warning (?). As you can infer from the cutesy cover (I love it!), this won't have many sex scenes. I'm not a fan of them, so I loved this fact even more, but I did observe this author tends to write other types of m/m books. I can't say if those few make up for it, because again it's not my thing. And for those who don't like sex scenes, as I said, there are some, but not many and definitely not the point of this story. I think it's worth giving it a try.

This is probably one of my favorite romcoms of this year and could even satisfy fans of romcoms outside of the LGBT niche. Looking forward to more books like this one!

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.