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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
Ty to Avon for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!
Deeply deeply charming, full of love for these characters and then finding their place in the world. I think that what really worked for me in this book was the way that both Eli and Peter felt so deeply tangible — I've known people like both of them! — and as a result nothing about their dynamic felt contrived, and they still ran into a lot of friction and the complications of people learning how to come together. Tbh I was just so genuinely delighted by this book, especially since it was pitched as a romance, which is a genre where I am often wary of the general genre expectations of it all!!
Deeply deeply charming, full of love for these characters and then finding their place in the world. I think that what really worked for me in this book was the way that both Eli and Peter felt so deeply tangible — I've known people like both of them! — and as a result nothing about their dynamic felt contrived, and they still ran into a lot of friction and the complications of people learning how to come together. Tbh I was just so genuinely delighted by this book, especially since it was pitched as a romance, which is a genre where I am often wary of the general genre expectations of it all!!
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was one of my favorite reads so far this year! I fell in love with these characters and was so attached to seeing this story through to see how it would end. Eli’s personal growth, while supporting and encouraging Peter was so wholesome and made for a lovely read that I absolutely devoured! I can’t wait to recommend this sweet book when it comes out in August of 2025!
Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager | Avon, Mason Deaver, and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager | Avon, Mason Deaver, and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
*Thank you to the publisher via Netgalley for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review*
While I initially struggled with this one--up to the maybe about the halfway marker, overall I think this is a pretty decent adult debut. I think what I struggled with initially is Eli was a bit of a difficult character for me to get fully invested in. I really liked the moments where he talked about his transition and where he and Peter talked about growing up queer. It's just that Eli himself was a bit of a frustrating character to be in the head of. While I do think he eventually got to the point where I could root for him, it definitely took a bit.
Also, while the workplace bit was honestly a big part of the story, I also really struggled with that. I realize its kind of paying homage to those classic rom-coms, but it felt a bit TOO familiar. Honestly, I think I probably would've given this a higher rating if the workplace element were taken out of the story entirely. Rather than being a cheeky little nod, it felt very telegraphed. From how things were going to pan out to the 3rd act break-up, it all felt a little rote.
But, god, did I really like Peter Park. Such a sweet character! Though it took me longer to warm up to Eli, I liked Peter immediately. I honestly wanted a lot more of him--even though there was a decent amount.
Despite my initial struggles and an ending that felt a bit abrupt, I still appreciate this book and this author for writing a queer love story where being trans isn't some shocking revelation, but something normalized and appreciated. We need more books like that more than ever. I'd still recommend this to anyone looking for a sweet, queer adult romance with a trans protagonist.
While I initially struggled with this one--up to the maybe about the halfway marker, overall I think this is a pretty decent adult debut. I think what I struggled with initially is Eli was a bit of a difficult character for me to get fully invested in. I really liked the moments where he talked about his transition and where he and Peter talked about growing up queer. It's just that Eli himself was a bit of a frustrating character to be in the head of. While I do think he eventually got to the point where I could root for him, it definitely took a bit.
Also, while the workplace bit was honestly a big part of the story, I also really struggled with that. I realize its kind of paying homage to those classic rom-coms, but it felt a bit TOO familiar. Honestly, I think I probably would've given this a higher rating if the workplace element were taken out of the story entirely. Rather than being a cheeky little nod, it felt very telegraphed. From how things were going to pan out to the 3rd act break-up, it all felt a little rote.
But, god, did I really like Peter Park. Such a sweet character! Though it took me longer to warm up to Eli, I liked Peter immediately. I honestly wanted a lot more of him--even though there was a decent amount.
Despite my initial struggles and an ending that felt a bit abrupt, I still appreciate this book and this author for writing a queer love story where being trans isn't some shocking revelation, but something normalized and appreciated. We need more books like that more than ever. I'd still recommend this to anyone looking for a sweet, queer adult romance with a trans protagonist.
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I love Mason Deaver, and I am very thankful to have read an ARC of their newest book.
I was dying laughing from almost the very first page. Eli and Peter's meet disaster was over the top disastrous (but still realistic!), and I could feel the awkwardness through the page. Peter shows up to Eli's workplace, where Eli is executive assistant to a journalist, to apologize. When Eli's boss catches wind of what happened, he tells Eli that the staff writer position is his if he writes an article about "fixing" Peter by teaching him how to date. Eli doesn't like this idea, but he really wants to become a writer, after slogging away as an assistant for five years with nothing to show for it. Eli prefers hard hitting journalism, writing about things that matter, but his boss only cares about the clicks. Eli pretends to go along with the idea, while also choosing to write another article about growing up queer in the south, since Peter is from a small town in Georgia. He only pitches this second idea to Peter, conveniently leaving out that he's still writing the first article alongside it.
I could see the third act conflict and breakup coming a mile away. My heart broke for Peter. How dare Eli do my man dirty like that. The miscommunication is strong from the beginning. Eli is concealing his intentions from Peter.
Peter is precious. He is very autistic-coded. He finds it hard to detect sarcasm and is very literal in his interpretations. One of my favorite Peter moments (there are many!) is when Eli is reading Peter's dating profile. One of the prompts is "Favorite Dish" and Peter's response is "Mugs." When Eli says he doesn't understand, Peter is all like, "Mugs, they're good for hot things. You've got the handle there, they're comfortable in your hand." (exact quote from the ARC, subject to change, though I hope it doesn't, LOL) I literally laughed out loud during this scene.
Although I was mad at Eli, I could also relate to him plugging away at a career that doesn't fulfill him. He has big dreams but has become resigned over the years. I loved him as a main character.
Peter is Korean American; the author is not. The book is written from Eli's point of view (Peter is the love interest), but I am curious to see how Korean American readers react to his representation. I liked that Mason Deaver exposed the racism in the queer community, the reality that so many gay men write things like "No Asians" on their profiles. As a white reader, I cannot speak to the quality of the representation, but I did want to note it.
I was dying laughing from almost the very first page. Eli and Peter's meet disaster was over the top disastrous (but still realistic!), and I could feel the awkwardness through the page. Peter shows up to Eli's workplace, where Eli is executive assistant to a journalist, to apologize. When Eli's boss catches wind of what happened, he tells Eli that the staff writer position is his if he writes an article about "fixing" Peter by teaching him how to date. Eli doesn't like this idea, but he really wants to become a writer, after slogging away as an assistant for five years with nothing to show for it. Eli prefers hard hitting journalism, writing about things that matter, but his boss only cares about the clicks. Eli pretends to go along with the idea, while also choosing to write another article about growing up queer in the south, since Peter is from a small town in Georgia. He only pitches this second idea to Peter, conveniently leaving out that he's still writing the first article alongside it.
I could see the third act conflict and breakup coming a mile away. My heart broke for Peter. How dare Eli do my man dirty like that. The miscommunication is strong from the beginning. Eli is concealing his intentions from Peter.
Peter is precious. He is very autistic-coded. He finds it hard to detect sarcasm and is very literal in his interpretations. One of my favorite Peter moments (there are many!) is when Eli is reading Peter's dating profile. One of the prompts is "Favorite Dish" and Peter's response is "Mugs." When Eli says he doesn't understand, Peter is all like, "Mugs, they're good for hot things. You've got the handle there, they're comfortable in your hand." (exact quote from the ARC, subject to change, though I hope it doesn't, LOL) I literally laughed out loud during this scene.
Although I was mad at Eli, I could also relate to him plugging away at a career that doesn't fulfill him. He has big dreams but has become resigned over the years. I loved him as a main character.
Peter is Korean American; the author is not. The book is written from Eli's point of view (Peter is the love interest), but I am curious to see how Korean American readers react to his representation. I liked that Mason Deaver exposed the racism in the queer community, the reality that so many gay men write things like "No Asians" on their profiles. As a white reader, I cannot speak to the quality of the representation, but I did want to note it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, Transphobia
Minor: Drug use
A queer rom-com for the ages!! This was a wonderful story that I adored so much and just had to finish as soon as I could.
I loved Eli and Peter. They were so awkward and cute and felt so real I was just rooting for them the entire time. They felt so 3-Dimensional and I thought they had great chemistry too. I loved all of the side characters too (Hated Michael and Keith... never hated side characters so much in a long time). There was so much yearning and "Fuck I am really falling in love" that I adored and I loved how everything played out in the end. The "Iced Americano" was something I loved too. This book truly has all the feels like a rom-com should, and I'll be impatiently waiting for the movie adaptation to this.
I loved Eli and Peter. They were so awkward and cute and felt so real I was just rooting for them the entire time. They felt so 3-Dimensional and I thought they had great chemistry too. I loved all of the side characters too (Hated Michael and Keith... never hated side characters so much in a long time). There was so much yearning and "Fuck I am really falling in love" that I adored and I loved how everything played out in the end. The "Iced Americano" was something I loved too. This book truly has all the feels like a rom-com should, and I'll be impatiently waiting for the movie adaptation to this.
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Eli, an assistant to the editor at a Buzzfeed-esque mag that's fallen from hard-hitting articles to listicles, has given up on dating. However, he hops back on that horse for one last first date with Peter. It's a cringe-worthy abomination of a date. But what if Eli turned Peter, guileless and unpracticed at dating, into a project and wrote about it so Eli can finally make the jump from assistant to staff writer? And what should Eli do when his evil himbo editor demands a schlocky takedown demeaning Peter's inexperience instead of the careful exploration of growing up gay and Korean in small town Georgia that Eli has planned?
A poignant read with a smidge of spice (not closed door - yay!). Definitely will check out Mason Deaver's future books.
A poignant read with a smidge of spice (not closed door - yay!). Definitely will check out Mason Deaver's future books.
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
I never rate books that are . 75 cents haha but it just wasn’t a 4 star read for me. I didn’t like the miscommunication at first. I didn’t care about Eli’s workplace and it had to do a lot with that. The best explanation I can give this book is based upon two movies. Hitch mixed with Mr Deeds. I didn’t grow a connection with Eli and Peter as much as I thought I would.
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Build-a-Boyfriend Project is my first book by Mason Deaver—but I know it won't be my last. Deaver turns "practice dating"—an oft-used trope that could in a less skilled writer's hands feel tired—into something that feels warm and charming, like coming home with two incredibly charming and real main characters who worm their way into your heart.
The book follows our protagonist, Eli—long-suffering assistant at a publication who's hoping to make a break into a staff writer position. He began working at the publication with a lofty idea of it—the old days, where articles that meant something were prioritized; unfortunately, since then, the site has gone the way of so many other modern news outlets, prioritizing clickbait headlines and ad revenue traffic. In the midst of all this, he's set up on a blind date with a man named Peter that goes horrendously wrong; Peter's late and constantly checks his phone, ducks out early to work and spills half the meal on Eli.
What begins as Eli's pitch to cover Peter's struggles with dating as a gay Korean-American from the South becomes shaped by his boss as the titular "Build-a-Boyfriend Project", where Eli and Peter will fake-date in an effort to teach the other man how to become boyfriend material. Eli just learns along the way that, while he might have been rough around the edges, Peter might have been made of the right stuff all along.
I ate this book up. There's no better way to put it. In one night, I'd read a good helping—then the next, a bit more. But once I was about 40% of the way through, I couldn't stop. Fake-dating for any reason is a trope straight out of fanfiction—for good reason! It's charming! You know that the couple is going to catch real feelings long before they do! But for the same reasons, it's often overdone and worn out. But Eli and Peter were written so deftly, with experiences and struggles of their own that made them stand out as characters that it hardly mattered that I knew where they were going; I was captivated by every word. They were both incredibly unique characters that broke out of typical archetypes, and when they came together, the dynamic between the two was so believable that it was easy to watch them inch their way into each others' lives.
Because they were so well fleshed out, it was also so easy to not feel so frustrated when the characters made mistakes. They made mistakes because they were humans with their own motivations and struggles and wants and flaws, not because the book required a little bit of conflict. It's something I struggle with a lot in books—bumps in the road feeling forced—but all of the ups and downs in Eli and Peter's relationship felt honest to who they were as characters and the way their relationship had been built.
Sure, there are things I wish we'd seen fleshed out a little more—Eli's boss at the publication he worked for felt a little one-note (it's traffic! we don't care about hard-hitting journalism anymore! clicks, clicks, clicks!), making Eli's clinging to the hopes of the future sometimes feel exasperating. Similarly, Peter had dreams aligned with writing that I wish we'd dug a little more into—the way that tied into where his character ended up felt a little too easy. But you know what? It hardly mattered to me, because I was so pleased for them as if they were my own friends instead of characters I was reading on a page. I yelled at Eli the way I'd yell at a friend to get out of a dead-end job, I cheered for Peter the way I would one of my dearest friends achieving their dreams.
BRB, making a Letterboxd list of all of the films featured in the chapter titles and doing a marathon just to chase these feelings all over again.
The book follows our protagonist, Eli—long-suffering assistant at a publication who's hoping to make a break into a staff writer position. He began working at the publication with a lofty idea of it—the old days, where articles that meant something were prioritized; unfortunately, since then, the site has gone the way of so many other modern news outlets, prioritizing clickbait headlines and ad revenue traffic. In the midst of all this, he's set up on a blind date with a man named Peter that goes horrendously wrong; Peter's late and constantly checks his phone, ducks out early to work and spills half the meal on Eli.
What begins as Eli's pitch to cover Peter's struggles with dating as a gay Korean-American from the South becomes shaped by his boss as the titular "Build-a-Boyfriend Project", where Eli and Peter will fake-date in an effort to teach the other man how to become boyfriend material. Eli just learns along the way that, while he might have been rough around the edges, Peter might have been made of the right stuff all along.
I ate this book up. There's no better way to put it. In one night, I'd read a good helping—then the next, a bit more. But once I was about 40% of the way through, I couldn't stop. Fake-dating for any reason is a trope straight out of fanfiction—for good reason! It's charming! You know that the couple is going to catch real feelings long before they do! But for the same reasons, it's often overdone and worn out. But Eli and Peter were written so deftly, with experiences and struggles of their own that made them stand out as characters that it hardly mattered that I knew where they were going; I was captivated by every word. They were both incredibly unique characters that broke out of typical archetypes, and when they came together, the dynamic between the two was so believable that it was easy to watch them inch their way into each others' lives.
Because they were so well fleshed out, it was also so easy to not feel so frustrated when the characters made mistakes. They made mistakes because they were humans with their own motivations and struggles and wants and flaws, not because the book required a little bit of conflict. It's something I struggle with a lot in books—bumps in the road feeling forced—but all of the ups and downs in Eli and Peter's relationship felt honest to who they were as characters and the way their relationship had been built.
Sure, there are things I wish we'd seen fleshed out a little more—Eli's boss at the publication he worked for felt a little one-note (it's traffic! we don't care about hard-hitting journalism anymore! clicks, clicks, clicks!), making Eli's clinging to the hopes of the future sometimes feel exasperating. Similarly, Peter had dreams aligned with writing that I wish we'd dug a little more into—the way that tied into where his character ended up felt a little too easy. But you know what? It hardly mattered to me, because I was so pleased for them as if they were my own friends instead of characters I was reading on a page. I yelled at Eli the way I'd yell at a friend to get out of a dead-end job, I cheered for Peter the way I would one of my dearest friends achieving their dreams.
BRB, making a Letterboxd list of all of the films featured in the chapter titles and doing a marathon just to chase these feelings all over again.
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I received this book for free as an eARC in return for my honest review. Having read other of Deaver’s books I was excited to give this one a read. Eli and Peter are lovely characters. I found Eli hard to like at times, but I think that was the point of his character. His flaws made the story. Going into this knowing the “fake dating” trope, I expected the pit falls. While I truly appreciated was how the story was wrapped up. That deviated from the norm a bit. Overall, my big wish would be to have had more depth from Peter. I would have loved for this to be dual POV and gotten to see a bit more from him. Otherwise. Loved it!