Ben Easton is not your average romantic hero. He’s a tattooed, badass, wannabe rock star, working in a perfectly horrible dive bar in Camden Town. His life is good, and he’s totally unprepared for how one man will turn it upside down.
Stan isn’t your average heroine. As a gender-fluid man, he proudly wears his blond hair long, his heels sky-high, and his makeup perfectly executed. A fashion industry prodigy, Stan is in London after stints working in Italy and New York City, and he quickly falls for Ben’s devil-may-care attitude and the warm, soft heart Ben hides behind it.
Beneath the perfect, elegant exterior, Stan has plenty of scars from teenage battles with anorexia. And it only takes the slightest slip for his demons to rush back in while Ben is away touring with his band. With the band on the brink of a breakthrough, Ben is forced to find a way to balance the opportunity of a lifetime with caring for his beautiful boyfriend.
Comment: Last year I've read another book by this author and I wasn't as amazed by it as I thought I would. Despite that, having another one in the pile, I dived in hoping I would like this one better and while it wasn't bad, it didn't thrill me either...
I ended up having a similar opinion about this book as I did to the other one by the author I had tried: great premise, great ideas, but the execution didn't convince me. There is something about the way the story is told that failed to captivate me completely and part of it is certainly due to the jumps in time and situations without us following the process gradually enough.
For instance, regarding this specific detail, the book is divided into two parts, and at the end of the first everything is fine, the two guys are practically established, they have expressed and shared their feelings with one another and then, suddenly, at the beginning of part two, Stan is at the hospital and Ben knows nothing about it! I was surprised, where did this situation come from? We are simply told about it and the rest of the plot went from there.... perhaps I'm not seeing the art in this style, but it felt rather jarring to me.
The set up for this story was appealing enough for me: Stan works in fashion, has the looks, has the experience despite his young age (22) and the facts that a) he comes from Russia and has a specific way of identifying himself, being gender fluid, this affecting how freely he could live in that country and b) he has battled anorexia, which isn't as common in men as is in women, were details that made me curious about him. He is also described as very beautiful and all that, and I could easily imagine him in my head. I wondered if his past issues would be part of the novel and they were, but not exactly as I thought.
Ben, on the other hand, is described as a hot tattooed guy, with a messier lifestyle, with many jobs including bar tending but also tutoring (which I found an amazing extra) and we also understand his family background made him doubt his place as a younger man and so on. I mean, it was clear the two protagonists had vulnerabilities and perhaps those would be common points to bring them together, besides the physical attraction. I imagined the story would be quite focused on how easy or not their relationship would progress.
In fact, the romance starts slowly and until the end of the first part it felt as if things would go smoothly. Then, I will admit to you, I've made a mistake. At that point, I was curious enough about some secondary characters - mainly some of Ben's friends/co members of the band, and I wondered if the sequel to this book (there is a second book, yes) would be about one of them. I checked the blurb and, what! The blurb of the second book caught me unaware and I was a little annoyed to have read it, because it ruined the rest of the book. That blurb is based on the expectation the reader had read the first book and certain details told me something would happen until the end.
Well, that was what I thought. In fact, I kept reading, dreading what would happen to lead to what was described on the blurb of the sequel and that wasn't what happened after all. The story line kept focused on the main situations already in progress and when the book ends, the two guys and the band were doing mostly fine, etc. That tells me that probably there will be more time jumps where one situation might not be seen on the page. Added to the fact I wasn't always as engaged with the story as I wanted, I'm now convinced that I will not read that sequel.
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