I was expecting to enjoy Jenny Holiday’s Book Club Boyfriend. She has a talent for blending charming characters and easy breezy writing with some deeply emotional topics. In Book Club Boyfriend, she reshapes her typically good writing and pushes the boundaries of genre romance to give us her best book to date. I’ve read a bunch of fantastic books recently, and this one grabbed me and shook me.
Blair (most likely inspired by Reese Witherspoon, but this is not veiled real person fanfic) and Jack (a minor character in Into the Woods) initially meet when Jack rejects the offer for his debut to be one of her book club picks. And then he says something (unintentionally?) snotty about her in an interview. When Jack realizes how he came across, he texts her an apology. Thus begins their friendship. Blair and Jack are acutely observant and capable of being insightful of everyone except themselves. Blair is adjusting to life as a newly divorced person and being an empty nester while also struggling with undiagnosed mental illness. Jack is trying to write his sophomore book and failing. They connect in this moment when they are vulnerable without admitting that they are vulnerable, not really even to themselves. The process of watching them realize how much they love each other is wonderful.
Book Club Boyfriend is intentionally a genre romance masquerading as women’s fic, masquerading as genre romance. (I will die on this hill. Jenny Holiday knows exactly what she is doing here.) For most of the book, Blair and Jack’s relationship is not romantic: they are helping each other out, they are talking about life, they are talking about art, they are holding hands. It is a very slow burn. But, the central focus of Boyfriend is their relationship. All of the things they are doing individually make the relationship possible, and the friendship they build makes the things they are doing individually possible. Long before they acknowledge they are romantic, they are seeing each other, and looking out for each other in ways that are loving. They are giving each other the kind of love that grand romances are made of and they don’t recognize it. It makes much more sense that these two guarded people develop any kind of emotional intimacy by stealth. Holiday doesn’t ignore traditional contemporary romance pacing, but she shapes it to her story instead of letting genre expectations shape the plot.
I loved Book Club Boyfriend so much I’m kind of mad at myself about it. I don’t know why.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Forever (Grand Publishing) and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.
