Review: Husband Material by Alexis Hall (London Calling #2)

Husband Material by Alexis Hall
My rating: 1 of 5 stars (For the most up to date version of this review and to see my book highlights click the star rating to be taken to the goodreads review)

First off, I loved Boyfriend Material. I thought it was cute, funny, and both characters seemed ready and willing for personal and romantic growth. I also love romcom movies especially 90s and early 00s British romcom movies. I even re-watched Four Weddings and a Funeral before reading Husband Material (highly recommend - the movie really holds up well)! So now that we have established my credentials as the target audience for Husband Material, I can say with absolute conviction, this book was a massive dumpster fire of betrayal.

In short, Husband Material fails to capture even one ounce of the wit or charm or even hope of the movie it ripped off from. Every single wedding and the funeral were portrayals of how to be an exhaustively self-loathing narcissistic dick to everyone you know including your own boyfriend. In between the self-loathing there was shoe-horned in social commentary that came out of nowhere and led to nothing. I have yet to figure out what the point of all this was. If we can say Boyfriend Material is a book about two people in bad places finding hope and love in each other, we can say Husband Material is over 400 pages of pointless drivel.

For example, Luc (who is the point of view narrator again), continuously talks about heteronormative weddings and marriage as if they are the same thing and has approximately 100 different positions on them and ultimately lands on none of them. What, then, was the point of the constantly insulting Oliver and his lack of interest in balloon arch-filled parties and implying Oliver is the wrong sort of gay for not liking rainbow balloons when the conclusion for Luc is the balloon arches don't matter and don't mean anything??? Why did we go through this? How did we end up here? ????

I could write a million more words on this but I will instead limit myself to one (1) item per part of the book so I can go to sleep and forget I ever read this but still allow a glimpse of the hot garbage mess. If you want more you can read the book (do not recommend this path) or you can scroll through my highlights. Godspeed.

Part One

Luc, as "maid of honour", wears a crocheted vulva hat to his best friend Bridget's bachelorette party/hen do or as it was called in the book "non-gender specific bird do" because he, and I quote "thought having only penis hats would be heteronormative and/ or transphobic". This was an attempt to subvert the stereotypical bachelorette party by including vulva iconography.

The problem with this is a fundamental lack of understanding of what subversion is. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, subvert means to overturn or overthrow from the foundation (ruin) or to pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith. Instead, the book reinforces the foundation of society.

A gay man wearing a vulva hat to be a "non-gender-specific bird do" does not allow space for genders not on the binary nor does it make it non-gender-specific. One would not immediately know Luc is gay and has zero interest in vulva. Indeed, one would assume it's a reinforcement of the heteronormative ideals of hen dos and bachelorette parties because the cis man, as it were, does not wear a penis hat. The book made it "no homo" instead of "subverted gender specifics".

Part Two

Part two has so many problematic things it was hard to narrow them down but as I already touched on Luc being a narcissist and accusing Oliver of being the wrong kind of gay, I will focus on the absolute horrendous behavior Luc exhibits towards everyone he comes across. He is written as a bumbling zany idiot who is only clear and direct when he is being cruel. The best example of this is when Luc goes to buy Oliver an engagement ring at a jewelry shoppe.

Luc, who is written as a bumbling zany idiot, says “I guess,” I tried. “Um. A ring?” when asked what he is in the shop for. The customer service associate then tries to help Luc specify what kind of ring and offers a selection of them, to which Luc asks for something cheaper. Then this exchange happens:

“The first tray was in the middle, sir.”

I tried to remember that working in customer service was unrewarding and people had to take their entertainment where they could.

“Okay, something just under the middle, then. Something below average. Because I am a below-average person, as you have so clearly implied.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?” said the gaslighting fuck on the other side of the counter.

In what universe did the employee, or as Luc so charitably described him, the "gaslighting fuck", imply Luc was below-average? This and approximately one million other instances are what Luc is like in this book. He is rude, mean, self-centered, and constantly makes other people feel bad for no reason. Are we meant to find this funny or charming? Because it really, really isn't.

Part Three

Ah, yes, the classic tale of a privileged white person hating on a different version of privileged white people while refusing to reflect on himself. Or, Luc is a huge butthead at his coworker's wedding who did nothing to deserve his scorn. I could talk about the huge fight he and Oliver had about Oliver being polite at this wedding and it meaning Oliver wants a religious heteronormative ceremony (something Oliver has never said), or the zany accidental breaking and entering of someone else's home, or Luc making Oliver's body image issues about himself again, or how every apology Luc offers isn't an apology and instead is a deflection wrapped in self-loathing in an attempt to manipulate the recipient of Luc's non-apology into apologizing to and reassuring Luc, or any other number of things.

What I want to talk about is Luc's spoiled brat baby response to his co-worker Alex Twaddle telling Luc a joke for once and Luc not getting it immediately:

“I don’t know, Alex.” I thought it only fair that I go through the full joke-recipient routine. “What does a Roman pirate say?”

“Summus.” Everybody laughed except me. Because I went to a state school. The annoying thing was I could probably work out why it was supposed to be funny from context. I mean it was a pirate joke. There’s only two endings to a pirate joke, and one of them is just an attempt to subvert the original ending.

[...]

Fuck, why did every conversation with Alex end with me feeling like I was the one with the problem?

Because you are the one with the problem, Luc. Which is proven later when he says this to his boyfriend, Oliver, who dared to disagree with him about something:

“And now it seems like you’re going to want our wedding to be this mega-traditional bells-and-incense thing with no queer iconography because you’re so insecure in yourself that rainbows make you uncomfortable.”

Like, what is this? What are we meant to take from this??? What is happening. I thought I was reading a romantic comedy.

Part Four

Part Four is the funeral in the Four Weddings and a Funeral setup in which Oliver's dad dies from a heart attack. The first several chapters of this part are dedicated to Luc making Oliver's grieving and helping out his family about himself. Because of course. And this book completely missed the point of the funeral in Four Weddings and a Funeral. The movie scene, while incredibly sad, still had a lot of hope. This has Luc being a self-absorbed buttwipe to everyone yet again. And the funeral was for Oliver's dad. A man who had very little page time in either book and frankly lacked the emotional punch of the movie this book stole from. I did enjoy Oliver making his long overdue speech at the funeral and it was nice growth from him but he still gave Luc, an undeserving child, all of the credit.

Part Five

Finally, the end. Luc and Oliver getting married. oR aRe ThEy?? (spoiler alert: they don't get married and run away from their own wedding because of Heteronormative Societial Expectations, etc.) This could have been a rather sweet realization they worked together better as a non-married couple because external pressure wasn't healthy for them or they had long conversations about what marriage would look like for them.

Instead, I get the feeling these two have never spoken in their lives. The first time either of them brings up maybe they don't want a wedding or to be married is right beforehand? For Luc, it was the middle of the night before the wedding and he tells his best friend Bridget and not Oliver at all and then decides to go through with the wedding anyway and never once considers talking to Oliver. For Oliver, it's right before their wedding ceremony is meant to start but he, at least, has the decency to tell Luc to his face. Unfortunately, this is regressive Luc we are talking about, so Luc gets incredibly butthurt and throws garbage at Oliver who is crying and makes Oliver explain why he doesn't want to get married to Luc when Luc had come to the same realization only hours before! What IS THIS??? It isn't romance and it isn't making me look forward to their next book.

Conclusion

No.



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