When we pick up three years later, we’re almost primed to think that everything is fine and dandy (heh) because usually the epilogue in a romance novel is nothing but “everyone is happy, and probably there’s a kid.”īut that’s not where we’re at with these two characters, and it was a bit of a dash of reality to remember that both of them were and are working through significant issues. The thing is, even in the original novel there was a significant amount of time dedicated to exploring Luc and (to a lesser extent) Oliver’s neuroses and issues. Now that we’ve dispensed with the entire spoiler free bit, we’ll move into the Boyfriend Material spoilers: And that’s because the usual arc–boy boy, boy gets to know boy, boy loves boy–is done. Perhaps in a first for books I’ve read by Hall, we can’t really shelve this in the rom-com category despite its clear love for the genre (the first book was a paean to, amongst others, Pride and Prejudice by way of Bridget Jones’ Diary, while this novel is a open homage to Four Weddings and a Funeral, with the same framing narrative). This book, like the prior, is longer than your average rom-com, but the pages seem to just fly by. This is all sounding very negative! Let me be clear: I think that Hall has done it again, created two vivid, lovely, queer as rainbows (but not only rainbows, of course) protagonists whose travails I am deeply invested in. I went back and forth on whether I should–full disclosure, I did not end up doing so–but having now done so, I think I’d have been a bit kinder in my assessment of this book, and Luc/Oliver in general. I would also recommend anyone who hasn’t re-(re-)read Boyfriend Material since it came out to re-read it before plunging into this novel. I don’t mean to knock this book at all, but I will say that reading it (and wanting to give it a four) made me realize that Boyfriend Materialshould have been a five (that has been rectified, even before my re-read) (re-re-read, I should say).
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