I read Boyfriend Material for the first time in 2020, during Australia’s first COVID lockdown. Six years on — and with A24 confirmed in April to be developing the novel for television — I picked it up again, this time as homework ahead of Father Material, the concluding book in Alexis Hall’s London Calling trilogy. No broadcaster, cast or release date has been announced yet, but the news that Luc and Oliver are headed for the screen felt like the perfect excuse for a re-read.
For anyone who hasn’t met them: Lucien “Luc” O’Donnell is a 28-year-old disaster with a washed-up rock star for a father and a reputation in tatters, thanks to one very compromising tabloid photo. To save his job at a beetle conservation charity with the unfortunate acronym CRAPP, he recruits Oliver Blackwood — a barrister so upright he practically squeaks — to play his boyfriend for a season of excruciating public appearances. It is meant to be fake. It does not stay that way.
I came to Boyfriend Material fresh off Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue, and told myself I already knew the tricks: a flawed-yet-perfect lead, a fake-dating trope worked half to death, an ending you could see coming from the back cover. Every reason to roll my eyes was sitting right there on the page. I loved it anyway, cover to cover.
What got me… what still gets me…; is Luc and Oliver’s chemistry, all opposites-attracted with barbed banter and unearned tenderness, and the sheer generosity of the supporting cast. Odile O’Donnell, Luc’s ex-actress mother, is one of my favourite characters in fiction, full stop: a woman who treats chaos as a love language and somehow steals every scene she’s in.
It also helped that Boyfriend Material refused to flatten queer life into one shape. Alongside Luc and Oliver, there’s a gay couple mid-way through adopting a child, a straight couple who have decided, loudly and against family pressure, that they don’t want kids, and two women whose decades-long friendship matters more to them than any romance ever has. Nobody in this book is punished for wanting a different version of happiness to the person next to them.
On that “flawed-yet-perfect lead” cliche specifically: Luc narrates his own low self-esteem and covers it with a cruelty that, on paper, should have been unbearable to spend 300-odd pages with. It wasn’t. Hall earns the softening, and by the time Luc lets Oliver see past the jokes, the cliche stops feeling like one at all.
Revisiting the book six years later, ahead of Father Material, was a joy I hadn’t expected. Rediscovering just how complicated Luc’s life is. Going back to the absent father, the messy exes, the self-loathing he papers over with one-liners — hit differently on a second read. So did his friendship with Bridge, which does as much heavy lifting for Luc’s arc as the romance does.
Boyfriend Material matters to me for a simple reason: it opened the door to Alexis Hall, now one of my favourite authors working today, through the rest of the London Calling trilogy and beyond. It was followed by Husband Material in 2022, and this year by Father Material, which closes out Luc and Oliver’s story — my review of that one is still to come. Christina Lauren, the New York Times and USA Today bestselling duo, called Boyfriend Material “hilarious, witty, tender, and stunning” on its release, and it went on to be named a best book of the year by Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Goodreads and The Washington Post. Six years on, I’d argue that praise still undersells it.
If you’d rather listen than read, BookTube reviewer Tori’s take on the audiobook (narrated by Joe Jameson) is worth seeking out. She credits narrator Joe Jameson with giving “all the different characters” distinct, “amazing, beautiful and unique” UK accents, and lands on the same thing I keep coming back to: a genuinely healthy, communicative queer relationship at the centre of a genre that doesn’t always offer readers one.
Rereading Boyfriend Material before Father Material felt less like homework and more like catching up with old friends — the kind you didn’t realise you’d missed until they were back in the room. That’s the part I wasn’t expecting from a re-read six years on: not just remembering why I loved this book, but falling for Luc and Oliver all over again.