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A review by calidareads
The Build-A-Boyfriend Project by Mason Deaver
4.0
Mason Deaver is an author I have been following and reading from for years now, and this book was one I was really excited for! After reading it, I can confirm that this book lives up to my expectations. I loved the setting and the characters (I'm an SF Bay Area Native, so I loved seeing the city represented!) Eli and Peter were so lovable as main characters, and I really was rooting for them the entire time.
However, this wasn't a perfect book. At times, it felt like Peter was too distant. We were so deeply entrenched in Eli's head, so it felt more difficult to fully grasp Peter as a character. I liked his backstory a lot, and I was hopeful we'd get more depth into his experience growing up as a queer kid in the south. It really felt surface-level at times. I also felt like the ending lacked a conclusion to Eli's story. Eli ends up quitting his job at Vent, which was good, but then we never get a resolution. As someone in their 20s who is struggling with my career, I need for the protagonists I read about to end with a job, lol!
The last, little detail that I noticed was about a certain linguistic thing. It's small, but NorCal natives refer to highways like this: "She drove to Santa Cruz on 17". We don't use an article before the number, which SoCal natives do. Mason Deaver had Eli refer to a highway with an article (I don't remember the exact highway, but they wrote "the [highway number]" vs just the number. Small detail, but as a linguistics student this is something we talked about often.
Overall, I had a great time with this book! Mason Deaver is an auto-read author for me, and I'm excited to see what else they write! Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for early access for this book!
However, this wasn't a perfect book. At times, it felt like Peter was too distant. We were so deeply entrenched in Eli's head, so it felt more difficult to fully grasp Peter as a character. I liked his backstory a lot, and I was hopeful we'd get more depth into his experience growing up as a queer kid in the south. It really felt surface-level at times. I also felt like the ending lacked a conclusion to Eli's story.
The last, little detail that I noticed was about a certain linguistic thing. It's small, but NorCal natives refer to highways like this: "She drove to Santa Cruz on 17". We don't use an article before the number, which SoCal natives do. Mason Deaver had Eli refer to a highway with an article (I don't remember the exact highway, but they wrote "the [highway number]" vs just the number. Small detail, but as a linguistics student this is something we talked about often.
Overall, I had a great time with this book! Mason Deaver is an auto-read author for me, and I'm excited to see what else they write! Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for early access for this book!