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A review by thegreatmanda
For Real by Alexis Hall
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
First Read Review, March 11, 2023:
First things first: This is a sexually explicit gay BDSM romance novel with a significant age difference between romantic partners. If any of those things are not for you, you will not like this book.
If you're a person who can enjoy all of those things, this book will light you up from chapter one, and it does not let up. It is scorching hot and achingly, absurdly tender.
The alternating POVs are used to full effect. Without hearing Toby's thoughts, it would be easy to dismiss him as a naive kid, and without Laurie's POV, he would seem like just a grumpy prematurely-old man. I don't think I would have really felt what the characters feel for each other, without hearing from both of them.
Also, I will never look at lemon meringue pie the same way again.
Edit: It is now six days later and I've started reading my next book, and I still can't stop thinking about this book. I keep having thoughts about how crap like Hemingway is immortal, but no one important will ever take this book seriously enough to care about how incredibly human, real, and lovable these characters are. They just kind of live in my heart forever now, I think.
One of my favorite parts is also one of the most uncomfortable and awkward parts, which isthe aborted scene at the party Laurie doesn't want to go to. Laurie's willingness to go through with it in defense of Toby absolutely melts me. Toby's correct read of Laurie's feelings and how easily he calls a halt to the thing are just a few of the reasons why I disagree with other reviews I've seen, saying Toby seems like more of a sub than a dom, or that people don't find his dominant side believable. He's a fantastic dom in this scene. He's just inexperienced.
Favorite Quotes:
First things first: This is a sexually explicit gay BDSM romance novel with a significant age difference between romantic partners. If any of those things are not for you, you will not like this book.
If you're a person who can enjoy all of those things, this book will light you up from chapter one, and it does not let up. It is scorching hot and achingly, absurdly tender.
The alternating POVs are used to full effect. Without hearing Toby's thoughts, it would be easy to dismiss him as a naive kid, and without Laurie's POV, he would seem like just a grumpy prematurely-old man. I don't think I would have really felt what the characters feel for each other, without hearing from both of them.
Also, I will never look at lemon meringue pie the same way again.
Edit: It is now six days later and I've started reading my next book, and I still can't stop thinking about this book. I keep having thoughts about how crap like Hemingway is immortal, but no one important will ever take this book seriously enough to care about how incredibly human, real, and lovable these characters are. They just kind of live in my heart forever now, I think.
One of my favorite parts is also one of the most uncomfortable and awkward parts, which is
Favorite Quotes:
It was almost as if the Scene ran on fairy-tale logic: A pauper in a ball gown was a princess. A wolf in a nightcap, a grandma. A wanker in a pair of leather trousers, a dom.
In my experience, one of the less well-advertised secrets of group sex was how often it came down to logistics.
He's kind of silent, but his body is all noise under me. Thunderous.
What could I do with a boy who had brought me to my knees twice, yet still held my hand in the dark? What could I give in return for such kindness? Such faith? I would so gladly bear all the pain he gave me, intended and incidental, and the loss of him when his inclinations took him elsewhere.
But if I ever have a kid of my own and maybe someday I will - I hope so - I'm not going to raise them like that. Believing the shape of their world is the only shape for the world to be. Well, I guess the poor bastard won't have much choice. They'll be starting life with two dads after all.
"I want to give him everything, and the things I can't give, I want him to take."
He's my prince. Fierce and fragile and tender and cruel.
I was going to have him lead since he's so much taller, but there's no way that's happening. He's stiff as a board, and his hand holding mine is a terrified claw.
Just when I thought I couldn't love him any more.
He's sleek with happiness, somehow, like the man I fell in love with lives on the surface now, not hidden deep inside, and it blows my mind to think that's for me and because of me.
=========================
Second Read Review, July 9, 2024:
Fifteen months after I read For Real for the first time, the gorgeous rerelease has come out.
Until I began to read it for the second time, I don’t think I’d realized how fundamentally this book affected me. Almost every time I’ve read a romance since then, I think a part of me has been disappointed that it wasn’t this book. Toby and Laurie are just so ordinary and human in the midst of all this heightened kink, and it’s so much more real (heh) than any other portrayal of kink, at any level, that I’ve encountered. As intense as their sexual relationship is from its beginning, the sexiest moments (at least to me) come from the other ways that they touch each other, the things they say, and their reactions to one another.
It's wild that Laurie is so determined that what Toby needs is the same love life narrative that Laurie had with Robert: someone close to his own age to grow through adulthood with and build a life together. Laurie seems to be missing the part where that didn’t exactly work out perfectly for himself, and even if it had, it’s not fair to assume the same thing is right for everybody. It’s also the most egregious example of Laurie trying to parent Toby even as they’re in this intense physical relationship, instead of seeing the ways that Toby’s early life catapulted him into being a fully formed man in so many ways, for better or worse.
Toby himself is, as Laurie says, stunning. Coming back to the text again, remembering my original thoughts about his inexperience and youth versus his excellent instincts for dominance and for Laurie, it was gratifying to see his learning curve play out again. And what a gift, to be able to read Hall's annotations about the same aspects of Toby's character I see as I read him. The way that Laurie's cautious detachment can't hold up against Toby's intensity and relative emotional maturity makes for a rewarding, fully-earned growth arc for both of them.
I love these characters and their story so, so much.
(And then there's In Vino. Oh, Jasper.)
Additional Favorite Quotes:
Fifteen months after I read For Real for the first time, the gorgeous rerelease has come out.
Until I began to read it for the second time, I don’t think I’d realized how fundamentally this book affected me. Almost every time I’ve read a romance since then, I think a part of me has been disappointed that it wasn’t this book. Toby and Laurie are just so ordinary and human in the midst of all this heightened kink, and it’s so much more real (heh) than any other portrayal of kink, at any level, that I’ve encountered. As intense as their sexual relationship is from its beginning, the sexiest moments (at least to me) come from the other ways that they touch each other, the things they say, and their reactions to one another.
It's wild that Laurie is so determined that what Toby needs is the same love life narrative that Laurie had with Robert: someone close to his own age to grow through adulthood with and build a life together. Laurie seems to be missing the part where that didn’t exactly work out perfectly for himself, and even if it had, it’s not fair to assume the same thing is right for everybody. It’s also the most egregious example of Laurie trying to parent Toby even as they’re in this intense physical relationship, instead of seeing the ways that Toby’s early life catapulted him into being a fully formed man in so many ways, for better or worse.
Toby himself is, as Laurie says, stunning. Coming back to the text again, remembering my original thoughts about his inexperience and youth versus his excellent instincts for dominance and for Laurie, it was gratifying to see his learning curve play out again. And what a gift, to be able to read Hall's annotations about the same aspects of Toby's character I see as I read him. The way that Laurie's cautious detachment can't hold up against Toby's intensity and relative emotional maturity makes for a rewarding, fully-earned growth arc for both of them.
I love these characters and their story so, so much.
(And then there's In Vino. Oh, Jasper.)
Additional Favorite Quotes:
In my experience, one of the less well-advertised secrets of group sex was how often it came down to logistics.
God. How could he turn so quickly from wicked to vulnerable? It made me dizzy and sweetly helpless, these bonds of silk and mischief.
I gave him my smile too, left there against his skin, in his hand, like a secret.
It's not what you do, it's what it means.
The muscles of his back shifted under his T-shirt like the memory of wings as he worked, and every now and again I'd catch the flash of his forearms, all pale skin and sinew, dusted only faintly by dark hair, the occasional freckle.
Since Robert, I'd been so wary. I'd lived like a jackal, hoarding my happiness as though it could be stolen from me at any moment.