Boyfriend Material

I really wanted to like this book, and there are aspects of it I enjoyed while reading. However, the stereotyped and often annoying secondary characters kept ruining my enjoyment.

In this book, Luc is the mildly famous son of an old rock star who needs a respectable boyfriend to keep his job. Rather than fight against the obvious discrimination of the situation, Luc decides to get a fake boyfriend who is an “acceptable” gay. To this end, he begins dating Oliver, a controlling, sometimes uptight lawyer. Of course, as in any hate to love fake dating story, they develop real feelings for each other before conflicts arise and threaten their budding relationship. You know, the standard plot.

I actually liked the relationship between Luc and Oliver. They are good for each other, and the chapters early on that deal with their romance are good. However, the conflicts that arise between them later on in the book are unnecessary. They do not seem like real-life conflicts that would actually cause couples to break up. In all fairness, I find this a problem in many romance books.

My main problem with this book is the secondary characters. I absolutely despise Luc's coworkers and some of his friends. They are portrayed as ridiculous stereotypes, especially his coworkers. They are utterly clueless, and it's just annoying. I do not believe that any one person would have that many ridiculous people in his life.

If this book had been shorter and had eliminated the frustrating side characters, I might have enjoyed the read. As it is, I cannot rate it any higher than 2 stars.