Audio book length: 13 hrs 33 mins
Rating: 4 stars
CBR16 Bingo: Rings (a whole bunch of rings being exchanged in this book)
In Boyfriend Material, Luc and Oliver met, pretended to date for a number of reasons, pretended to be in love, fell in love, broke up, and then decided to actually date for real. By the time this book starts, they have been together for a good while (I want to say at least a year?) and as is often the case at a certain age of your life, they keep being invited to weddings. All this focus on romance and matrimony and people committing to spending their lives together. Luc begins to wonder if he and Oliver shouldn't also get married.
The structure of this book is loosely based on classic rom-com Four Weddings and a Funeral. I don't even want to go into detail about which people are getting married, because discovering that is part of the fun of the book. I can also reveal to potentially axious readers that the death that leads to the funeral is not for any of the main supporting cast (I was worried when reading the book), but does affect several of the characters.
I have labelled this contemporary romance, even though the plot doesn't concern itself with a couple meeting, falling in love and working their way to the inevitable HEA or HFN. That was the previous book. This is a follow-up, but it is also a contemporary novel, with a central theme of romance. The ending is not in any way unhappy, and the story wouldn't work if one removed the central romance from it - hence I get to call it a contemporary romance, even if it's more of a 'What do they do after the HEA/HFN?'
When this came out, there were a bunch of reviews saying that the tone was a lot more serious and depressing than in Boyfriend Material and a lot of people seemed to be disappointed in it. I was not in a place emotionally to be disappointed by the book, so kind of forgot about it even though I'd pre-ordered it. Then, a few months ago, my friend Ashley read a bunch of Alexis Hall books and did a vlog about it. She reminded me that this book existed, and furthermore, she was very positive about it. So back onto my soon to be read TBR it went and it seemed like a perfect fit to read in June, during Pride, since there's a bunch of queer characters in it, and the author is gay.
Having also acquired it in an audiobook sale on Audible at some point, I mostly listened to this in audiobook while cycling to and from work. Joe Jameson also narrated Boyfriend Material and does an excellent job repeating his performance here. He has very distinct voices for most of the rather sprawling cast, and now there is no one else I would like to hear reading to me about these weirdos.
I will say, that being determined to structure it with four weddings and a funeral and giving each of the sections almost equal attention means that the book does drag on in places, and it's longer than it needed to be. It was still a very entertaining read, and I'm now very curious about another of the books Ashley talked about, 10 Things That Never Happened.
Judging a book by its cover: Very much in the style of the first book, this is a cute cover that suits the book. I don't really have much else to say about it.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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