Let's Talk Books

Huge thank you to Afterglow Books, Timothy Janovsky and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this book, in return for an honest review.

I have never read Janovsky before, and unfortunately I think he isn’t for me! I really wanted to enjoy this book, and there were passages that I really loved, particularly when Holden and Leo were chatting and getting to know each other. Unfortunately those passages were overshadowed by some elements that I really didn’t enjoy.

The high energy of this novel is refreshing, and it makes the writing fly. Clocking in at around the 200 page mark, depending on your edition, this isn’t just a fast-paced read, it’s a short read too. When a book is both so brief, and written with such a swift flow, it can be hard to get to know characters fully, and I think for me that really impacted how much I cared. More than that, given that this is a romance book, I think it made it hard to understand what these two saw in each other. They met, they had a couple brief interactions, and then they were going to go to bed? It was very insta-love, which I’m usually not against, but here it felt so unlikely.

I’ve seen some reviewers compare this to Alexis Hall’s London Calling / Material World series, and to an extent I think that’s a fair comparison. The difference here is that Janovsky does not have the same structured lulls, or moments of serious contemplation that we see in 10 Things That Never Happened (for example.) I think if you enjoy the wild madcap elements of Hall’s novels, particularly the London Calling duology, then you will really enjoy this. All that being said, there is a noticeable difference in writing style and characterisation between Hall and Janovsky. Let’s take, as an example, two ostensibly similar characters. Luc, from London Calling, and Holden from T[F]D. On the surface they have a lot of points of similarity; both are dumped in traumatic ways; both wear their queerness in a colourful and flamboyant way; both make or intend to make bold sexual choices; both [spoilers ahead] find themselves enamoured with comparatively serious men with a tendency to err on the side of dominant; and both, and this really is impressive, enter into fake dating scenarios for something (broad strokes) work related. And yet, they aren’t really that similar. Luc thinks himself unlovable, he is desperate to move on, and yet thinks himself entirely unworthy. His mental health, and emotional growth, drive the story on. Holden might say similar things, but he seems to thoughtlessly throw himself into wild situations, his emotional state yo-yos up and down in almost every scene. By the half-way point I found myself skimming through the passages of introspection, because I simply didn’t get him. There may well be character growth here, but it’s possible I missed it.

That brings me onto our main couple. Whilst I enjoyed some of their interactions, and I thought the initial premise had a lot to offer, I really struggled with Holden. I found him very hard to sympathise with, even when he was talking about really hard things, because his emotions seemed to skyrocket up and down, from sad, or pensive, to gleeful or horny at the drop of a hat. He spoke in odd sound-bite-esque one-liners, and the speech tags didn’t always seem to match the words themselves. Take, for another slightly spoiler-y example, his first interaction with Leo. We, the reader, are told that Holden is being short, if not rude then rude-adjacent, similarly we are told that Leo is teasing, an obvious joker. No part of that interaction implies that on either side. In fact, to my mind, it read like a pretty straight forward interaction: bar the insistence that concierge at a not-great hotel must have an in at every restaurant in town. That being said, I think Leo really works as a love interest. He’s described as beautiful, he reads as thoughtful, his decisions are questionable but his motivations at least track. I can’t help but wonder if his POV would have made the whole thing more cohesive, but that doesn’t seem like a fair critique.

They got physical a little earlier than I would have expected, but I don’t have much else to say on that front. Smut is smut, I don’t read much of it, this seemed fairly middle of the pack to me. Nothing utterly scandalous, nothing totally vanilla.

Overall I think this was a fair read. I didn’t enjoy it, personally, but I do think some people really will. For a shorter, more balanced review see Goodreads or StoryGraph.