RELEASE DAY REVIEW: 'Pansies' by Alexis Hall
Title: Pansies
Series: A Spires Story
Author: Alexis Hall
Published: October 10, 2016 Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Cover Artist: Simoné/Dreamarian Images
Genre: Contemporary Romance; Erotic Romance
Length: 405 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M; Coming Out; HEA
BLURB: Alfie Bell is . . . fine. He’s got a six-figure salary, a penthouse in Canary Wharf, the car he swore he’d buy when he was eighteen, and a bunch of fancy London friends.
It’s rough, though, going back to South Shields now that they all know he’s a fully paid-up pansy. It’s the last place he’s expecting to pull. But Fen’s gorgeous, with his pink-tipped hair and hipster glasses, full of the sort of courage Alfie’s never had. It should be a one-night thing, but Alfie hasn't met anyone like Fen before.
Except he has. At school, when Alfie was everything he was supposed to be, and Fen was the stubborn little gay boy who wouldn’t keep his head down. And now it’s a proper mess: Fen might have slept with Alfie, but he’ll probably never forgive him, and Fen’s got all this other stuff going on anyway, with his mam and her flower shop and the life he left down south.
Alfie just wants to make it right. But how can he, when all they’ve got in common is the nowhere town they both ran away from.
5 HEART READ
REVIEW:
Love Doesn’t Rescue
In Alexis Hall’s Pansies, love renders all creatures foolish in its power. Hall paints uncomfortably vivid scenes, showing why love’s poignancy is especially awkward for gay men. Yet anyone can identify with these humorously realistic situations.
Why would we need to justify who we love?
After making it big in London, formerly “hetero” Alfie returns to his hometown for a wedding, and accidentally outs himself. In the self-conscious aftermath he ends up in bed with Fen, who he doesn’t recognize. Fifteen years earlier, as the High School bully, Alfie had ridiculed and abused Fen, his peer. Alfie has grown up to be successful, while Fen is torn down, but completely tempting.
Fen offers a chance at redemption. Alfie pursues, to make amends, and, well… to get laid. Hoping to prove he’s matured, Alfie finds he’s hiding behind his success and he may need more help than Fen, the man he wants to rescue. “Fen and his grief, and his pain, and the twist of his smile, and the deep green places in his eyes where his joy was waiting.” Fen must likewise save himself.
Alexis Hall’s language is absolutely entrancing. He manages to capture his character’s complex and contradictory pieces, as if he’s in love with each of them.
“Sometimes I think that’s all love is. Understanding, smoothing away your strangeness. Making you part of the world, not separate from it.”
And shortly after: “He was on the brink of everything. It made him sort of messy inside, turned on and safe, and strong and weak, and just completely there, the gay-straight, north-south, rich-poor, right-wrong man boy he was.”
Training clinicians as a psychologist, I saw experience improve trainees’ skills. But empathy and raw talent can’t be learned. Alexis Hall is a better psychologist than I was. And he’s an even better writer.
There is great wisdom in this novel, deep philosophical pondering, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.
And I haven’t even mentioned the sex scenes… Eep!
If you’ve never read Alexis Hall, do yourself a favor. Read Pansies. If you’ve read him before, give into temptation; get this novel.
His books are like eating buttered popcorn while watching a great movie. They don’t save you, but make you crave life… just a little more.
A copy of Pansies was provided to Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter, by the Riptide Publishing, in exchange for our fair and honest opinion.
Alexis Hall was born in the early 1980s and still thinks the 21st century is the future. To this day, he feels cheated that he lived through a fin de siècle but inexplicably failed to drink a single glass of absinthe, dance with a single courtesan, or stay in a single garret.
He did the Oxbridge thing sometime in the 2000s and failed to learn anything of substance. He has had many jobs, including ice cream maker, fortune teller, lab technician, and professional gambler. He was fired from most of them.
He can neither cook nor sing, but he can handle a 17th century smallsword, punts from the proper end, and knows how to hotwire a car.
He lives in southeast England, with no cats and no children, and fully intends to keep it that way.
