I blasted through three Alexis Hall books in relatively quick succession in 2022 and then sputtered out in 2023 when I borrowed Husband Material from the library and never got around to reading it and had to return it. Last year was a slump year, but the bummer of not being able to get into a book that I had been so excited about following reading Boyfriend Material has sort of kept me away from Alexis Hall books since. That is, until I saw narfna’s vlog on YouTube about catching up on Alexis Hall and her delight in the audio version of 10 Things That Never Happened followed quickly by dreadpiratekel’s rave review of the same audiobook and I quickly requested it from the library.
This was an excellent decision. I spent my sick day yesterday listening to over 70% of the book and couldn’t have been happier to spend that time listening to Sam explain to me how in the heck he had gotten himself into the situation of letting his boss believe he had movie-style amnesia in addition to his very serious concussion and why it was important for Jonathan to have to be the one taking care of him, both because Sam needs a plan for keeping everyone from being fired at the store he manages in Jonathan’s bed and bathroom empire, but also because there may really not be anyone else who could take care of Sam. Throw into that the very real prospect that someone should get Jonathan to stop being such a prick to everyone around him.
I’ve been surprised each time I pick up an Alexis Hall book by how much I like them, because so much of Hall’s style is things that don’t always work for me in other books. Often these are single POV romances which are not my favorite. Hall also tends to write long books (this one was over 10 hours of audio, and the paperback will set you back 423 pages) and to do that successfully you really have to earn your reader’s interest, especially in romance as those books tend to top out at 300 pages. Every time I would check the runtime left in the Libby app, I would start to wonder how there could still be over half the book left and then be naturally guided through the events that justified the length. But then again there are all these wonderful things that Hall does that suck me in and have me happily zipping along with the stories his characters are experiencing. Hall is FUNNY, this book in particular made me laugh throughout, even though it is balancing some heavier emotions and dramatic entanglements and being decidedly earnest throughout. The way Hall crystalizes the absurdity of the world around us should be studied.
So much of this book is Sam choosing to continue his fake amnesia not just because he feels the need to continue the plan to save everyone’s jobs, but also because he is covering up grief and an aching loneliness that pretending to not remember frees him from having to process as the holiday season descends on him again and it lets him stay with Jonathan, who he is more and more reticent to leave (Hall also adds some plot points that help justify the several weeks he is living in his house). This is another Hall book without a villain as Jonathan is both the antagonist and the love interest and Sam seems committed to getting in his own way and not dealing with a van’s worth of baggage. But through Sam we see all the insecurities and idiosyncrasies of Jonathan and how he has interpreted his own past and family history to make decisions that equate to distancing himself from others.
Also, do the audiobook version of this one. Its narrator, Will Watt, is so astoundingly good.
