Tag Archives: Alexis Hall

Glitterland

Book Review of Glitterland, by Alexis Hall

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GlitterlandI bought a copy of Glitterland, by Alexis Hall.

Description from Goodreads:
Once the golden boy of the English literary scene, now a clinically depressed writer of pulp crime fiction, Ash Winters has given up on love, hope, happiness, and—most of all—himself. He lives his life between the cycles of his illness, haunted by the ghosts of other people’s expectations.

Then a chance encounter at a stag party throws him into the arms of Essex boy Darian Taylor, an aspiring model who lives in a world of hair gel, fake tans, and fashion shows. By his own admission, Darian isn’t the crispest lettuce in the fridge, but he cooks a mean cottage pie and makes Ash laugh, reminding him of what it’s like to step beyond the boundaries of anxiety.

But Ash has been living in his own shadow for so long that he can’t see past the glitter to the light. Can a man who doesn’t trust himself ever trust in happiness? And how can a man who doesn’t believe in happiness ever fight for his own?

Review:
I should admit up front that I am a relatively new reader of romance. Yeah, it’s been a couple years since I picked that first one up, but that still leaves, like, 20 that I refused to. And it’s only a little more recently that I started reading LGBT+ romance. Honestly, it’s fairly recently that I even discovered it exists and have been kind of devouring it ever since, because het gender tropes make me crazy. (But I’m drifting.)

I’m newish to romance and though I enjoy it now, I still can’t quite stand undiluted romance. If there isn’t some other aspect to the plot beyond X & Y meet and fall in love, I’m out. So, despite being by one of my favorite authors, I put this book off. Eventually however, it just irritated me to no end to have one more AJH book out there that I hadn’t read and gave in to its lure.

I’m glad I did because Ash’s mental health, exhaustive anxiety and over-thinking was enough to keep me interested beyond the romance and sex (of which there was plenty). He’s an eminently unlikable character, that dislike only partially negated by being pitiable. And Darian was just a darling. Presenting as shallow and simple, he was surprisingly adept at reading people and situations. He was also possibly the most forgiving human on earth.

This was my only real complaint with the book. I loved that he forgave Ash his many very serious foibles, but i thought he let some of them slide too easily, that last one especially. He felt a little door-mat like.

Then there is the Essex cant. A lot of readers disliked this. I however loved it. I thought it gave Darian’s character such personality and made reading the book more colorful and enjoyable.

All in all, another success from Hall, as far as I’m concerned. Also, for anyone who’s interested, there is a free short story available here that picks up just at the end of Glitterland.

For Real

Book Review of For Real, by Alexis Hall

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For RealI received a copy of For Real, by Alexis Hall from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Laurence Dalziel is worn down and washed up, and for him, the BDSM scene is all played out. Six years on from his last relationship, he’s pushing forty and tired of going through the motions of submission.

Then he meets Toby Finch. Nineteen years old. Fearless, fierce, and vulnerable. Everything Laurie can’t remember being.

Toby doesn’t know who he wants to be or what he wants to do. But he knows, with all the certainty of youth, that he wants Laurie. He wants him on his knees. He wants to make him hurt, he wants to make him beg, he wants to make him fall in love.

The problem is, while Laurie will surrender his body, he won’t surrender his heart. Because Toby is too young, too intense, too easy to hurt. And what they have—no matter how right it feels—can’t last. It can’t mean anything.

It can’t be real.

Review:
Another stellar read from Alexis Hall. I really shouldn’t be surprised. I’m getting pretty close to card-carrying fangirl status, if I’m honest. I thought this one was quite different from anything else I’d read by him; Shackles maybe coming closest. (Though, I haven’t read his whole catalogue.) But I was skeptical picking it up because of the BDSM theme. I simply haven’t had great luck with such books.

I get that BDSM is having its moment in the book world, right now. There seem to be an unusual number of ‘romances’ coming out using it as a schtick…or a theme, maybe. But I find that as much as I like the idea of it, I’m almost always disappointed, if not disgusted by them.

Because, here’s the thing, I don’t know what it’s like in a real-life BDSM pairing, but the overwhelming number of books I’ve read with BDSM read like what my dear mother, who despises anything that removes the sacred from the sexual, calls ‘mutual masterbation.’ In other words, the characters in the scenes feel not like two people engaging in  a meaningful way and having sex with one another, but two people individually using the other as an object for masterbation, connected by nothing more than proximity and ocular availability. And I rarely find that anywhere near as sexy as it’s intended to be. (My own interpretation of Dalziel’s jadedness, coloured by my own experiences of course, was that he was sensing this same tendency to force a partner into a fantasy mold that you act upon, instead of engage with on a personal, human level.)

This is where For Real shined for me. I understood both Dalziel and Toby’s needs and how/why they filled those needs for one another. I saw how hard they each worked to make the other happy and I understood the BDSM aspect of their relationship as something other than a fantasy one individual perpetuates on another. I didn’t need a narrator to repeatedly reassure me that the scene wasn’t abuse because the sub really was enjoying it, because I could see that and I understood why. And. It. Was. Beautiful.

Both Dalziel and Toby were wonderful characters. I especially appreciated that they weren’t flawlessly gorgeous people, beautiful to eachother, sure, but Dalziel was blunt and often angry looking and Toby was too skinny and had acne. I really love finding relatable, normalish people in books. I also thought Toby’s teenaged voice was marvellous, though I was admittedly skeptical about a man/boy who got a D and an F on their GCSEs having the vocabulary, poetic familiarity and general depth of thought of an Oxford scholar. But I was able to roll with it.

There were some fun side characters—the bisexual best friends with an obviously open relationship, Angel with the purposefully vague gender, Dominic the Dom (who played the alto-sax and seemed to be an unbearably nice guy), the free-love mother, the academics. Man I’d love to see Jasper and Sherry get their own book.

And as always, Hall managed to rip my heart out with the unintentional cruelties of lost love. I was never sure if I wanted Robert to suffer horribly or not—not for ending a relationship necessarily, relationships die, but for not seeing the ongoing injury his actions cause. Does such a person deserve to go on and be happy if he’s so unaware of his own destructive wake? Or am I just truly so unforgiving?

My complaints are few on this one: the overly intellectual nineteen-year-old I mentioned above, the fact that anyone as open and honest as Toby would be hard to find in real life, the fact that I didn’t feel I got to know Dalziel outside of his submission very well, and a couple of the scenes took on such a dream-like quality as to stand out as somewhat unmatched to the rest of the book.

All in all, I loved it. I’m not one who usually rereads books. My recall is such that I remember too much to ever have that fresh new feeling with a story. But unusually, I could see myself reading this again just to re-experience it.

Waiting for the Flood

Book Review of Waiting for the Flood, by Alexis Hall

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Waiting for the FloodI received a copy of Waiting for the Flood, by Alexis Hall, from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
People come as well as go.

Twelve years ago, Edwin Tully came to Oxford and fell in love with a boy named Marius. He was brilliant. An artist. It was going to be forever.

Two years ago, it ended.

Now Edwin lives alone in the house they used to share. He tends to damaged books and faded memories, trying to a build a future from the fragments of the past.

Then the weather turns, and the river spills into Edwin’s quiet world, bringing with it Adam Dacre from the Environment Agency. An unlikely knight, this stranger with roughened hands and worn wellingtons, but he offers Edwin the hope of something he thought he would never have again.

As the two men grow closer in their struggle against the rising waters, Edwin learns he can’t protect himself from everything—and sometimes he doesn’t need to try.

Review:
I’ve basically come to the conclusion that I will read anything Alexis Hall writes and enjoy it. (Have a spare shopping list, good Sir? I could probably pass an afternoon with it.) I love the way he can pack such an emotional punch into fewer words than any author I know of. It’s beautiful and I always (ALWAYS) fall in love with his characters. Waiting for the Flood is no different.

Having said all that, it didn’t work quite as well for me as some of the others. Still loved it, just a smidgen less than, say, Prosperity. The reasons are that some of the vague wordage left unclear of exact meanings. I didn’t care for the 3rd person intro to first person point of view chapters. (Though I loved the way the chapter title and first sentence merged. I was clever and created a wonderful sense of place.) Once the initial obstacle was overcome, the men seemed to jump from rocky start to relationship in milliseconds and I…OK, I hate to admit this but…I really felt Hall’s Oxbridge education on this one.

This is something I find both endearing (because who doesn’t like smart fiction) and off-putting (because some of it leaves me feeling a bit like a dullard in comparison). On the whole, however, I loved finding some wonderful surprise references, Edwin’s carefulness with words, Mrs. P. (Mrs. P!), Adam’s gentle insistence and two adult men addressing grownup concerns without the need for over the top drama. Certainly, opening yourself to love again is a daunting adventure of its own, if only looked at properly.