The Fake-up

By Justin Myers

Flo is a shop girl by day and wannabe singer by night and dream boyf Dylan works gruesome London as a night-time tour guide while nursing his non-starter acting career. They make the perfect couple: they’ve got cute games, a sweet backstory, and enough chemistry to launch a moon mission. Think early J-Lo and Ben Affleck. So how will Justin Myers keep us glued to his pages for the other 350 pages? Cue secrets, lies and subterfuge, oh and a ride-or-die gay roomie.

Poor Dylan feels like a sore Northern thumb around Flo’s posh set and she is super jealous of Dylan’s career-boosting ex. Flo’s music partner is holding her back, and, well, the foam ball and chain Dylan wears on his ‘immersive theatre experience’ is dragging his acting hopes down the gutter. Then, the inevitable heart wrenching break-up rears its ugly head.

But, as a wise person once said, ‘Life is what happens while you’re busy doing something else’ and Flo and Dylan each find artistic gold buried in the rubble of their busted love. The will-they-won’t-they-do-they-don’t-they relationship tension lasts for most of the final 15 chapters and keeps the reader in that heightened sense of tension that only a hydroponic skunk grower can master.

There’s lots to adore about this book. I felt a tug on my heartstrings for the gay couple in the book who are a sweet counterpart to the mess that Flo and Dylan make. There’s plenty of humour to keep the book readable and no character gets the wooden treatment, they’re all brimming with life. And there’s a takeaway for book groups to question: ‘What are you faking?’ and are you on ‘Team Floria’ or ‘Team Dylan’? Pour the Chablis folks, it’s going to be a bumpy discussion.

This book is for the ‘Normal People’ generation. It’s even got its own heartthrob jewellery! Imagine Helen Fielding and Nick Hornby had a child who grew up to write a 21^st century romcom that embraces gay romance as well as the straight variety. This is Justin Myer’s third novel (shall we call it a hat trick?) and true to form it is another heatseeker. The writing is effortlessly fresh, funny and the storytelling unfolds like warm ganache.  

Thank you to Little, Brown Company for the eARC and the fun distraction from the back-to-school blues.

Femlandia

by Christina Dalcher

Who would have the thought things could get any worse? But in Femlandia, Christina Dalcher serves up a dystopian look at the utter breakdown of society. It’s a violent world where the economic infrastructure has collapsed. The power has run out and utilities have run dry. The shops have been looted and it’s every man for himself. Literally.

Miranda’s husband, a dotcom entrepreneur, took the quick way out (like many others) and drove his Maserati off a mountain. Miranda and teenage daughter Emma hold out for as long as they can but soon take to the road to seek sanctuary at one of the country’s female-only compounds: Femlandia. Slight problem. Femlandia was founded by Miranda’s mother Win, and to say they don’t get along is a stretch.

Accepted into the womyn’s enclave, Emma, who has heretofore been an absolute angel goes into feral-teenage mode and Miranda is sneered at by her stepsister Jen who runs the show. Miranda is just a shade too trophy-wife for everyone and her skills are limited to the somewhat indulgent ‘primate-communication-specialist’. But soon, Miranda smells a rat in the womyn-haven.

There are tense acts of violence and an unfolding of many sad tales of women’s oppression at the hands of men. Though set up like a Cormac-McCarthy-meets-Handmaid’s-Tale this is no literary tour-de-force. The surprises of the denouement greet the reader a mile off and it is not an adventure-strewn nail-biter. But still, the concepts introduced by Ms Dalcher about humanity and its lust for power and its struggle to organise properly are profound. Femlandia serves up an ending in the tradition of Shirley Jackson – not nicey-nice at all.

I am sure book groups from age 14+ will revel in the amount of discussion they will get from this book. For that reason alone, you should put it on your purchase orders. But be warned, it’s not about feminism, it’s about the human ability to create a mess and not clean it up. Thanks to NetGalley UK and HarperCollins eARC. It was a frustratingly enjoyable read that I finished in a single sitting.

A Marvellous Light

By Freya Marske

In this Stranger Things meets Dr Norrell and Mr Strange mashup, uptight Edwin Courcey runs the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints, a Black Ops office reporting directly to Prime Minister HH Asquith. When his assistant goes missing, the bouncy boxing baronet (reluctant) Sir Robert (Robin) Blyth. Neither is comfortable with the arrangement but both are soon tied to a single goal: to release Blyth from a crippling curse (and find him a new job).

Aided by the immensely capable typist and right-hand woman Miss Morrissey, and impeded by Courcey’s magical malicious family, the two cross city and countryside to try to free Robin from the curse and solve the mystery of the missing assistant. They do this amid a wonderfully wrought Edwardian world. Freya Marske wields her pen like a wand in building the lush Edwardian world. It is as rich, dense and juicy as Christmas cake. What a treat.

The magic weaves itself delicately around the romance between Courcey and Blyth that develops in stops and starts as they suss out whether the other shares the same feelings. Their relationship blossoms like a rose. It is erotic and tender, sassy and funny, heart-breaking and life-affirming. Imagine being able to put all that into a tense and thrilling fantasy, but the wizardry of Miss Marske truly knows no bounds.

The main characters are vividly depicted, and the secondary characters bound off the page. The adventure hangs off the mystery of finding what happened to Reggie Gatling (the missing assistant), what he has left behind, and the solution of Robin’s affliction. Much to my delight, a group of crones (such an underused magic power team) holds the key to Courcey’s dilemma. There is a promise of a sequel and I cannot wait to see how the crones and the indubitable Miss Morrissey step up to assist. Fans of LGBTQ+ fiction will revel in it, but it is a universal tale of love, courage and (best of all) magic.

My immense gratitude to Freya Marske for a fresh and exciting read and to NetGalley UK and Tom Doherty Associates for the opportunity to be thrilled by this eARC.