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Dean Cole

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His Boy: A Gay Romantic Comedy Kindle Edition

by Dean Cole (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3.9 195 ratings

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Charlie Stone has problems. He’s just found his boyfriend and his new BFF in bed together, and that’s only because he failed to show up for his fortnightly back, crack and sack wax.

Furious, he speeds away from the gates of his luxury home into the unknown. When he finds himself stranded on the side of the road in a remote village, his future looking bleak, his dreams wasted on a fairy tale that turned out to be a nightmare, he doesn’t expect the handsome but shaggy-looking bookshop owner, Nathan Marshall, to come to his rescue. A Divine Intervention if Charlie ever saw one.

But the village is foreign land to glamour puss Charlie, who’s more at home in the bustling city, shopping for the latest trends, getting his hair coiffed and nails buffed by best friends, glamour girls Trinny, Kylie and Sasha than he is trekking through muddy hills in jeans and wellies. And Nathan’s never even seen the inside of a beauty salon, let alone considered having that tumbleweed on his chest waxed. How's a queen expected to survive in such dire circumstances?

Hope seems lost until Charlie discovers that an amateur dramatics group are looking for budding stars to fill in two of their starring roles at the last minute. Could the village offer more than babbling streams, scenic moorland and the smell of horse manure after all? Could it offer a chance for Charlie to claim back the dreams he thought were lost forever? And, more importantly, could an unlikely romance be brewing between this unlikely pairing, even when the dark characters from their pasts come back to make events very difficult for them?

A darkly comic look at love, death, dysfunctional family, emotional trauma and finding yourself. With a huge cast of characters, it's more than a romance. It's a story of self discovery. Gay romance. Gay romantic comedy.

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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07C1F984G
Publisher ‏ : ‎ (April 6, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 6, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2908 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 286 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,244,149 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,071 in Comedy (Kindle Store)
- #1,973 in Comedy (Books)
- #13,746 in Gay Fiction

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3.9 195 ratings

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Dean Cole

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Dean Cole writes LGBTQ character-driven stories with fast-paced plots that keep you clinging to the page. All stories have romance, humour and the drama of being human at their core.

Connect with Dean Cole:

www.deancolebooks.com

Twitter: @DeanColeWriter

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3.9 out of 5

195 global ratings

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Rachel

5 Sensational Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2019

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Consider me bemused and bewitched! "His Boy," is a one of those stories that will stay with me for a long time to come. Told in 1st person POV, it chronicles the life-changing journey of MC Charlie, who discovers his inner strength, gains self-acceptance, and learns what it means to be part of a loving relationship.

Charlie has sass and snark in spades, and his early actions are painfully self-focused and defensive; but his heart is big and vulnerable, and as he finds his place in the world, Charlie blossoms into a more confident and optimistic version of himself. I adored his interactions with love interest, Nathan. Their time together is so sweet, lovely (and occasionally giggle-worthy—that delightful dance with the rose!!). Nathan is sincere, gentle, kind, and *swoon* owns a bookshop. He is such a wonderful counterpart for Charlie, and I was cheering them on (even as things got a bit dicey toward the end).

Some of the loveliest aspects of the story for me were the moments of quiet and calm: camping out under the stars, exploring a charming small town, sitting at a hospital bedside, sharing a cup of hot chocolate. Cole is adept at emphasizing those quiet moments and making them feel deeply emotional, real and relatable. As many times as this story made me smile, it also made me feel melancholic and thoughtfully pensive; it was, by turns, heartfelt and heartbreaking.

Also, I can’t thank the author enough for offering a positive representation of vegetarianism/veganism. I have read numerous stories that use plant based eating as a source for ridicule, and it was refreshing to see it portrayed in a positive light!

This is my first Dean Cole novel, but it definitely won’t be my last. I look forward to following this author and cheering him on with his future endeavors.

Highly recommend!

This story reminds me of an inspirational quote that is perfect for Charlie:
"You matter. People love you for who you are. You are different. You are unique. You are magic. You are worthy and deserving of love and respect...Because you breathe. Shine your light. Share your gifts. You are here for a reason. Your story matters. You make the world more beautiful. Know that you are loved and the world needs you." -- The Happy Project

8 people found this helpful

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Ulysses Grant Dietz

Clever and funny, with a darker edge than I expected....

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2022

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Funny, a little giddy, and clever in both plot and style, this story of a young fallen star is not nearly as predictable as you might think.

It’s not really about a star, however, fallen or otherwise. Charlie Stone just THINKS he’s a star, and dreams of being one. However, he hasn’t actually ever done anything that would make anyone know who he is; a reality that doesn’t seem to intrude on his fantasies.

Charlie is twenty-five and ran away from home at nineteen, seduced by the promises of a very rich, much older man, Richard Cormack. As the book starts, he’s running away from Richard, whose habitual cheating after five years has finally crossed a line of which only Charlie was aware.

And here’s the rub: Charlie is not a very appealing person. He’s shallow, spoiled, lazy, and entirely unequipped to face the real world. His self-awareness is weirdly blinkered and delusional. I confess, the phrase that kept popping into my head was “feckless twink.” I worried rather a lot that the author was not doing this on purpose; that he felt Charlie to be worthwhile and likeable, and that I was just missing something. Even as the book ended, I had only just put away my dislike of Charlie, who finally has the epiphany I’d been waiting for.

Charlie had a miserable childhood. So had Nathan, the gentle bookshop keeper who inadvertently becomes his knight in shining armor one rainy night. Actually, his knight in flip=flops and boxer shorts. Nathan is Charlie’s counterpoint in the story: kind, gentle, wise, smart and multi-talented (although poor). Their hesitant friendship is at the core of the story, and my strongest impression is of Nathan’s endless patience. There are also quite a few nicely-drawn secondary characters who give heft to the narrative and create important reference points for both Charlie and Nathan.

As a gay man in his late sixties, I have known lots of other gay men with terrible family stories. After many years’ experience, my personal credo has become: “a lousy childhood only excuses so much.” This is something at play in Dean Cole’s book, and in the end I figured he must feel the way I do—but pushed it farther than I would have. This is a coming-of-age book in that Charlie has to grow up, which is a more complicated thing because of who Charlie is. There’s a lot of Charlie that made me uncomfortable and even angry. Ultimately, I think my reaction was just what the author wanted. Maybe the moral of the story is that gay men, however much we’ve struggled or suffered, have to figure things out for ourselves. To do that, we have to look beyond ourselves.

Easier said than done, as the author makes abundantly clear.

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Bookedup

cute story with an unlikeable protagonist

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2024

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Fun little book but the main character is so silly and immature it’s hard to take his tribulations seriously. This talented writer could do better.

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Sandra

What a nice discovery!

Reviewed in Spain on October 20, 2020

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Well, this was different!

I'm glad I found this for free because if not I wouldn't have read it and it was interesting and different from what I usually read.

It's supposed to be humour, but I didn't found this as funny as deep. It touches many tricky subjects such as getting to know oneself, parental emotional abandoning, forgiveness, shelfiness and many more.

In my humble opinion, Charlie isn't a likeable character, nor I'm guessing he was created to be. And that's were the "humour" part enters the picture. Charlie is a caricature, an exaggeration made to grow and make the reader realize alongside him what truly matters in life.

Charlie is 25 yo and has lived the last 5 with his twice older rich and controlling boyfriend? Does he even love Richard? Why is him dating him? Is it for the money? The security? Is it because of love?

His life crumbles down when he founds him at bed with his "BFF" Taylor, and that's a turning point in his life that makes him runaway and meeting Nathan for the first time.

Nathan is everything Charlie isn't: good-natured, shelfless, amicable and good-hearted. He helps Charlie without thinking twice and tried to make him realize what matters, and somewhat succeeds.

With his good and bad parts, it's a nice read that has some hilarious moments and that, as a comedy, includes some totally unrealistic but crazy funny moments. There are few in my opinion for a comedy, and the drama and the shelfgrowth has more impact on the overall story than humor, but it can't be denies the funny moments are totally hilarious.

The ending was a little bit lacking for me. Charlie's evolution is brutal and nice to read, but I wish there was such a nice romantic development also, and for me this part was somewhat rushed. If we has seen just a tiny bit more of the final reunion maybe I would felt it was better settled.

Overall it was a pretty good book and I enjoyed the author's writing style. I will definitely check for other of his works.

ElleLainey

Beautiful and Hilarious!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2018

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Book – His Boy
Author – Dean Cole
Star rating - ★★★★★
Cover – Cute!
POV – 1st person, present tense, one character
Would I read it again – Yes!
Genre – LGBT, Contemporary, Romance, Comedy
Content Warning – domestic abuse, suicidal thoughts, cheating, mental health, stalking

Yes, this is a romantic comedy, but it's also so much more than that. It's a journey of self discovery, of self reflection, and, as Nathan puts it, an awakening.

I'm still feeling pretty speechless, having just finished it, with a tension headache from wanting to cry but not being able to, so forgive me if I prattle on and don't make any sense.

I loved the main character of Charlie. He's flamboyant, femme, over-dramatic and adorable. Vulnerable at the core, he's someone who has been seeking validation his entire life but has never found it outside of a credit card before. He constantly underestimates himself, undervalues himself, and got sucked into the belief that material things could make him happy.

The story starts with Charlie escaping just after finding his boyfriend and best friend in bed together. He runs out, without his wallet, steals his boyfriend's temperamental car, in his bunny slippers, and a phone with a dead battery. Then gets stranded in the rain when he tries to avoid killing a bunny that surprises him on the road in the middle of nowhere. All this happens in the first few pages, but already we learn so much about who Charlie is, what his personality is like. That is so difficult to do with a 1st person narrative, and it's one of the reasons that I've never been a big fan of them. Sometimes it can take chapters before a character is organically named, described, or explored personality wise, in a 1st person narrative. Dean Cole avoids all of this, because the entire narrative is 1st person present tense, which means we're basically inside Charlie's mind the entire time, so he thinks through his choices, contemplates mistakes and opportunities, all as we follow his journey.

Then in walks Nathan, the saviour. A bookshop owner – yay, for the small town business man! – and someone with a heart big enough to take Charlie in on a thundering, raining night, but who isn't all that and then some. He's lifted off his feet by the evil cheating boyfriend, Richard, at one point, doesn't fight back, isn't in perfect condition, and that's awesome! Nathan is real, in a way that Richard is superficially everything that a man of forty-nine should be in a romance novel. Only, instead of Richard being the one who gets the guy in the end, it's Nathan. Breaking stereotypes and book tropes all in one.

Right from the start, I loved how Charlie was written, that he had that snarky, bitchy sense of human that I love so much, but can be quite over-the-top in the wrong set-up. He didn't have a great childhood, with a homophobic father, an absent/disinterested mother, but he fought hard to get away from all of that, even if it did take him down the wrong road. In a way, Nathan had a similar upbringing, except that he lost his parents to an accident, they died when he was young and he was raised by his grandfather. They both grew up alone, isolated from other kids their age, without parents who were there to help them grow. And I love that they discuss their pasts openly, when it feels natural. And they had great chemistry together, especially before anything bedroom-related happened. Which, when it did, was entirely off page and only known from Charlie telling his bestie Sasha about it.

I loved that there was a lot of soul searching going on in Charlie, right from page one. He knew that he'd been complicit in certain behaviours, that he'd allowed certain things to happen right in front of his eyes, and that things needed to change. And, despite the temper tantrums, the feisty moments, the times when his mood swings and depression got the best of him, Charlie tried his hardest to make it work. To find a way to change his fate, his luck, and his life, to something that was positive.

There's also a really diverse character set. I mean, it isn't often that I find someone even close to resembling me in a book, but there was Penny – a woman in a wheelchair, who had a positive outlook on life, and wasn't woe-is-me, but who wanted to get on with living her life to the full. Sasha and the girls were a riot of hard working, bubbly, exciteable girls who had Charlie's back no matter what. Hyacinth exists in just about every small town there is – a woman who had a dream, but gave that up for marriage/babies or some other demand that made it impossible to have both, who could never get over that loss, who thought themselves a failure and took it out on everyone else. And Richard, the self obsessed businessman with more money than sense, a temper that drifts into the controlling and violent, and a manipulative nature that is unrivaled. There are disabled characters, old biddies looking for a shot at stardom in community theatre, smart bookstore owners with a dream they're afraid to pursue, the flamboyant gay hag with no dress sense and no class, and the ordinary, every day people who make up a little village like my home, and the one in this book, who balance out the craziness of those who shine a little too brightly.

It addressed serious issues – like parental abandonment/loss, domestic abuse, financial independence, and anxiety/panic attacks – while still being the right kind of funny, the right kind of sweet and romantic. It wasn't overly cute or bubbly. The chemistry between Charlie and Nathan stood up to scrutiny and longevity, despite it being a case of somewhat insta-attraction. I won't say insta-love, because it wasn't, but everything did happen in a pretty short timeline, about a week or two. Yet it still managed to feel organisc, natural, and totally believable.

Honestly, I felt Charlie's pain. I didn't have a lonely childhood, bad parents, a dream I can't pursue, or anything that he had. I wasn't poor, I don't have to depend on others for money or the luxuries in life, and I don't have all that bottled up emotion he has. But I felt it. Since about 40% of the way into the book I was constantly on the verge of tears because I could feel how messed up and emotional and desperate this poor kid was, and how much he just needed to be loved. I ended the book with a tension headache, because every time I had the chance to cry, there was something funny or sweet or distracting to take my mind off it and I never got that release. But I don't care. I have that same feeling after finishing this book that I've had with the worst ugly-cry book I've ever read. And that is...essentially...satisfaction. Because, it was everything I wanted it to be.

~

Overall, this was a plot based romantic comedy that hits the feels with a sledgehammer.

~

Favourite Quotes

“I blow Richard a kiss then give him the finger. His face drops like he's just seen a ghost. Well, he has. The ghost of the old Charlie Stone. Something has shifted inside me. Something that tells me I'm never going to be the same again.”

“I'm a survivor. I mean, look at me. I've survived what were basically white water rapids on the way up here, I've eaten nothing but things that grow out of the ground and I've evaded an army of blood-thirsty witches. I'm practically Tarzan.”

3 people found this helpful

MMBook Reader

Not For Me..

Reviewed in Australia on June 6, 2018

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This book was "Not for me" Written in the 1st POV which is not my thing.

Tonwand North

Entertaining Story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2021

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Overall I enjoyed this story, but there were a couple of bits I didn't get. Why disclose the main characters had sex during a phone call with a friend. Intimacy doesn't have to be explicitly written; fade to black is fine. But kinda defeats the purpose of a romance novel when you skip the romance. Also, the main had some well-written and developed flaws. But he was continually a bitch to his love interest, so why did the guy love him? Charlie did work through his personal issues but at no point in this story was he ever sweet to Nathan, so why would Nathan show up as the Knight in shining armour at the end? Still, Charlie's character was unique and different, making for an entertaining read.

lisassm

Entertaining read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2018

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Charlie is a diva, pretty and fabulous (and he tells you this often), self absorbed drama llama. He annoyed the living daylights out of me for most of the book - but like a car crash, I had to see it through to the end....

Charlie runs away from home in his bunny slippers when he finds his boyfriend and BFF in a compromising position. When the car breaks down near a small sleepy village, he is rescued by the local bookshop owner - Nathan.

And then begins this tragi-comic journey of self discovery and reinvention of Charlie Stone. There were many funny moments, sharp wit and banter, but there was also pages of dialogue of self doubt, self analysis and patchy will-they-won't-they and side character red-herrings. I wanted Charlie to get off his arse and just be a grown-up!! Charlie's ex, Richard is a complete headcase and control freak and I was expecting some sort of dire retribution but was quietly glad he was all show and bluster at the end. Nathan needed some more "oomph" about him, he was just too gentle and quiet (maybe one too many of the self-help books?) and Charlie just walked all over him or was waiting to be rescued by him. And as for the Village Play? I'm not so sure what that was all about? And what were the consequences around the stolen dress??

A lot of this book was ridiculously over the top and maybe that was the point - the girls in the Salon, especially Sasha (with Jude Law Jnr) did raise a grin on more than one occasion. But, Charlie's seemingly endless floating from one crisis to another was wearing, even his light-bulb/epiphany moment didn't seem to have the "bang" I was expecting, although his time with his Father was quite poignant and a tad heartbreaking.

It finished on a strong HFN with an epilogue 12-months down the line, it was an overload of sugar and did make my teeth ache a little. Overall, I don't know whether the story was trying too hard to be several things at once or I needed a little more "reality" and less of the "hardy-ha-ha"?

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