Review by Gillian: My Lavender Boyfriend, by Marina Ford

My Lavender Boyfriend, by Marina Ford
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Release Date: May 23, 2018

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Simon Moussa is a formerly successful screenwriter who lives in London. He’s single and earns his living by teaching in film school, until an old friend, Charlie, visits one day with a strange proposition.

Nick Stone is a handsome, rich and famous actor, who hasn’t figured out how to be likeable in today’s social-networking culture. Because Simon is openly gay and has a pristine reputation, Charlie thinks that if the two were to pretend to be a couple, Nick would gain credibility, become likeable again, and Simon could use this to re-start his flailing writing career.

The plan is simple enough, and all they have to do is get along for a year—but even the simplest plan can go drastically awry when personalities clash and the past shows up at the worst time.

M/M Pairing
Gay Characters
Contemporary
Fake Boyfriend
Interracial Relationship
Actor

While I don’t usually find myself being drawn to the fake relationship trope, I couldn’t resist the pretty cover or the intriguing blurb, so I thought I would give it a shot.

My Lavender Boyfriend, is the story of a former screenwriter and a successful actor, both of whom agree to become boyfriends for one year as a career and public relations boost. Simon Moussa is looking to regain his screenwriting credibility after being screwed over several years earlier by an ex-boyfriend, and Nick Stone is in need of repairing his image after being publicly outed and going on a drunken, homophobic rant outside a Soho gay bar.

Something about this story didn’t quite work for me. There seemed to be a lot going on, what with Simon’s research for a writing project turning into a mystery, Simon’s ex coming back into the picture and Simon’s family issues. If you’re getting the impression that this book is all about Simon, you wouldn’t be wrong. The story is told entirely from his POV and for much of the story, Nick is relegated to the background.

Perhaps a different POV would have helped, or at the very least, a little more Nick and a little less Simon. Unfortunately, though, I never really felt emotionally invested in the relationship and even the ‘grand gesture’ at end felt a bit too-little-too-late.

In the end, I found this to be a fairly sweet but entirely predictable story that didn’t quite work for me.

Marina Ford is a thirty-year-old book addict, who would, if permitted, spend all of her time in bookstores, libraries, or in her own bed with stacks and stacks of books. Luckily, she has a husband and a dog who force her to interact with humans of planet Earth from time to time.
She does not believe in love at first sight— but she does believe in Happy Ever After, though it must be earned. She likes her stories to be light and frothy, since real life can be miserable enough without making up more of it in fiction. She lives in England, loves rain (gives one an excuse to stay at home and read books, right?), long walks (when it doesn’t rain), history, love stories, classical literature, pulpy literature, Jane Austen, languages, and dogs. It is her dream to one day possess an enormous country house in which each room is a library (okay, maybe except for the kitchen), and in which there are more dogs than people. A smaller and perhaps more realistic dream of hers is to make people smile with the things she writes.

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