Audio Review | Husband Material by Alexis Hall

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Wanted:
One (very real) husband
Nowhere near perfect but desperately trying his best

In BOYFRIEND MATERIAL, Luc and Oliver met, pretended to fall in love, fell in love for real, dealt with heartbreak and disappointment and family and friends…and somehow figured out a way to make it work. Now it seems like everyone around them is getting married, and Luc’s feeling the social pressure to propose. But it’ll take more than four weddings, a funeral, and a bowl full of special curry to get these two from I don’t know what I’m doing to I do.

Good thing Oliver is such perfect HUSBAND MATERIAL.

AMAZON (August 2nd) | AUDIOBOOK | STORYGRAPH | GOODREADS

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Review

(Content warnings will be below the rating at the end of this review)

Definitely want to start this review off by saying that I didn’t quite love Boyfriend Material as many others have, but I really wanted to give this story another go in their sequel, Husband Material. From beginning to end, all the thoughts were just stacking on top of each other and not in the best way, so here we go. I’ll do my best to keep this spoiler-free.

I think the biggest advice I’d share for this one is that if you were completely happy with the way things were in Boyfriend Material, I’d skip out on this one. The tone in Husband Material is not an all-around happy one and sadly, there wasn’t a lot of focus on the romance. The focus, to me, seemed to be on outside parties instead of their own.

When you start this one, Oliver and Luc have been together for over two years and maybe it was a bad assumption on my part, but I figured their relationship would be more solid. But instead, we get what felt like they’ve taken major steps backward and struggled to communicate. And it’s persistent throughout most of the book.

Around halfway through, there were some heavier topics that I didn’t quite seem coming and that threw things off a bit for me, and couldn’t recover from it.

And then there’s the ending, usually when I read a romance I tend to have a happier feeling and we’re usually left in a good place about the couple we’re reading about. But I felt like they would have been better off apart. Wasn’t the ending I hoped for and wished we got a different story overall.

My favorite parts were when Oliver and Luc could just BE together, in their own moments. It was really sweet and I was eager for more of that.

Listening to the audiobook really helped me get through this one, I loved the narration and was so happy they kept Joe Jameson on from Boyfriend Material. I’ll definitely be going to their backlist and listening to more.

This didn’t quite hit the mark with me, but you definitely might have a different experience.

★★★

CW: grief, death of parent, homophobia