Boyfriend Material (London Calling #1)

It had been a while since I last read a romance I could genuinely describe as good or even fun. Slippery creatures was fine but a bit forgettable, Happy Place was profoundly disappointing, Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun overstayed its welcome and One Last Stop whilst sweet as a romance was also hampered by its magical twist. All in all, it’s been almost a full year and 28 books since I last read a romance I really loved. Ironically that romance was Red, White and Royal Blue as Boyfriend Material’s pitch is so suspiciously similar that Red, White and Royal Blue could be seen as a transformative fan fiction. In both cases, a partying slightly mess of a person has to save their reputation by faking a relationship with a slightly uptight and seemingly dislikable other person. Romance genre obliges, one thing leads into the other and they end up being the most lovey dovey couple and Boyfriend Material tells this story beautifully.

Nevertheless, Boyfriend Material’s first impression did not impress. I do not think I’m particularly sensitive to the writing style, as long as the grammar makes sense, I can read most things without issue and if anything overly pretty and poetic sentence structure annoys me more than anything as I need to spend extra time making sure I understand everything correctly. Boyfriend Material might however steer a bit too much in the opposite direction. Not only is Luc a never ending sarcasm machine, Alexis Hall chose to structure his narration to be a 1 for 1 copy of what Luc thinks about in his head. This means that instead of regular sentences following each other, they are broken up by many instances of “erm…like totally… yeah” or “that was legit” or “oh…oh no…”. This has become a cliché of modern romance books and especially romcoms, the protagonist is always sarcastic and tries so hard to be funny, and the narration is written as if it were spoken rather than read which rarely gives off a very polished writing style. Except here it works. Luc is funny, he isn’t trying to be snarky or sarcastic like every other romance protagonist, he is just that and it is just justified with a detailed backstory that continues to affect him throughout this book.

This leads to Boyfriend Material’s other strong point: it uses every possible romance trope and yet skirts around every cliché and it sometimes even proudly tells the reader that it’s working around the cliché. The book can at its core be divided in cookie cutter sections of romance stories. You’ve got a starting situation that leads to the love interests meeting, they first hate each other, then they go on a first adventure that is a bit awkward, then they go on another and it goes much better, then we get a few honeymoon everything is great chapters, something goes horribly wrong but then it is fixed which usually leads to the climax (ha) of sex, then one last thing has to go wrong to finally have them reunite and look towards their lovely future together. Despite this, Alexis Hall manages to make reading through those sections a delight because every time he will subvert the reader’s expectations avoiding the expected cliché and making it feel like you’re reading a romance book that proudly sits on the opposite side of the room of every other romance novel. It also does not shy away from more serious and darker themes at times as some of the secondary plot points can end on more bitter tones. You are guaranteed a happy end on the romance side of things but that is the only committment to the romance genre this book makes.

This does not mean the book is exempt of criticism. The book relies heavily on absurd humour à la Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Kaamelott. It’s a type of humour that is very difficult to use efficiently as it drifts on the edge of the “random is funny” hole which is all too easy to fall into. Boyfriend Material manages to avoid that but as it does not advertise itself as an absurdist comedy, it took me a bit to decide whether it was a committed humour style or whether the author was experimenting with it for a chapter. Thankfully Alexis Hall committed to it and it works beautifully giving me some of the biggest laughs I have gotten whilst reading.

A byproduct of this is also that it helps some of the less well written bits of the story which are however few enough that I can count them and detail each of them right here:
1- Oliver as the resident perfect boyfriend and lawyer has a very refined way of expressing himself which works most of the time as a fun and kind of attractive quirk. This however comes as a downside when he finds himself arguing with someone and his arguments are too perfect. It then becomes obvious that the author is railroading the argument in Oliver’s favour just how we do when we think about an argument in the shower hours after it happened and make ourselves the perfect debater.
2- Luc’s group of friends includes one his ex boyfriends who left him to be with Luc’s best friend and they all still happily hang out together whilst still making slight venomous comments about how Luc’s best friend stole his ex. Maybe this speaks more to my own social health but I find it very hard to believe that this would be a relationship that would work in the real world.
3- The premise of the whole book is uncomfortably homophobic. It is highlighted as such but it’s also handled with more levity than I think the situation deserves. Granted, it is a romcom, not an essay on internalised homophobia but as the book went into some dark topics for its other secondary plot points, it is a shame the same seriousness was not employed for the main storyline.

To end on something positive, the romance is nigh on perfect. There is an undeniable superficial physical attraction and Oliver is generously described as a perfect looking man but once again Alexis goes the extra step here and his appearance is not the result of the romance magic where any man who goes to the gym once a week looks like a greek god. His lifestyle, eating habits, exercise routine and even mental health all play into how he looks and behaves and none of it is taken for granted because “he’s the love interest so he has to be hot regardless of what he does”. To add to this Luc and Oliver have genuine chemistry, the top layer of their personality are completely opposed because this is an enemies to lovers story but the way they get to know each other more deeply is incredibly heartwarming and cute. Characters in the book will repeatedly say “you should be together” and I can only agree here, Oliver and Luc match perfectly. I’ll for once even go as far as saying as the usual sex chapter is neither a token check mark exercise sex scene nor is it gratuitous pornography. The act is not what matters in it and instead the narration style showing how Luc’s abstract thoughts and emotions in the act are the focus and it adds to the sweetness of it all, not that their relationship needed any help on that front.

Boyfriend Material is not perfect and I will openly admit, it’s not high level literature, but it is fun and romantic. It might at first look and read like your run of the mill romcom but it took me into unexpected twists and turns and it’s a damn good time, maybe even one the best ones I’ve had reading so far, and I can’t wait to discover how Luc and Oliver’s story will unfold in the sequel.