Featured Photo by Mockuuups on Unsplash

I got a free ARC copy of this book from Booktrovert, so thanks to them and the author for the opportunity to read this before its release date.

When I saw Nichole Perkins was coming out with a book about popular book boyfriends, I was eager to see what it’s all about. Although I’m not super well-versed in the romance book genre like the intended target audience would be, I used to listen to the podcast Perkins co-hosted, Thirst Aid Kit, and got some good laughs and entertainment from it. So, why not check this book out to enjoy more of the same?

Book Boyfriends: 30 Fictional Men Who Are Better Than the Real Thing is an interactive book (complete with quizzes and games like M.A.S.H.) that covers well-known boyfriends across the literary canon in individual profiles. If you’re unaware, the term “book boyfriend” essentially describes a male fictional character, usually the leading man, that readers find attractive and desirable, turning him into the subject of many a fantasy. It’s a simple but modern term for what people have been doing for centuries—imagining themselves in romantic scenarios with the male characters they crush on.

A range of male characters represents different eras for readers of diverse age groups; we have classics such as Pride and Prejudice alongside contemporary books like The Love Hypothesis.

I like the tone of this book; its language is conversational like how a best friend would sound when you’re gossiping about guys, and every profile offers clever remarks that relate to the specific book boyfriend. At the same time, this isn’t necessarily a laugh-out-loud type of read. The profile of each man provides a pretty straightforward summary of the book’s plot and the leading man’s actions and doesn’t lean as hard into the chaos and humor that this book’s concept entails, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

The pages are also full of colorful illustrations depicting each dude in their natural element—whether that’s beside a rustic roaring fireplace or in a modern science lab. The stickers, quizzes, and small games throughout remind me of the teen magazines of the 2000s-2010s that I used to obsessively read and collect, including Tiger Beat, Bop, J-14, Word Up!, and M. Very cute and nostalgic for us older Gen Zers and millennials.

This is likely lesser known to people of our generation, but even the teen mags of the ’70s and ’80s had the same type of interactive content.

On that note, imagining my mother as an adolescent filling out a quiz on a topic like “How Compatible Are You With Michael Jackson?” has me wailing with laughter.

I don’t know who half the dudes in Book Boyfriends are, so I had to take some of the descriptions at face value. Some of them made me interested enough to want to read the book in question; A Love Song for Ricki Wilde had never really been on my radar until now. (Coincidentally, Ezra Walker, the male love interest in Love Song, appears to be the only Black man featured in this book.)

On the other hand, a few men who’ve made it between these pages are likely to be contested among readers.

For example:

1. I was surprised to see Gale Hawthorne being talked up as such a perfect match for Katniss when he doesn’t even end up with her. Katniss says herself that Peeta’s warm and kind nature is better suited for her after she’s experienced the horrors of war.
2. After reading Jane Eyre in high school, I never understood the hype behind Mr. Rochester. He seems like an asshole and isn’t even attractive enough to make up for it.
3. Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights is also in here. I’ve yet to read that book so I can’t speak to this myself, but based off what I’ve heard of it and its characters, this is a very controversial pick from a novel that barely seems to count as an actual romance.

But circling back around to the Ezra Walker thing, because—seriously. Maybe I’m missing something. Like I said, I don’t know every character; perhaps some of these dudes are Black biracial/mixed or have ambiguous races and could be read as Black (as seems to be the case with Heathcliff among some readers). But if I’m right, then Ezra is really the only Black male character featured, which I find strange considering the range of other races depicted. Black female authors have been ramping up the Black love stories in recent years, and many books have gotten pretty popular; plus, classic authors like Beverly Jenkins and Alyssa Cole have been writing Black romance forever. If you ask me, more Black book boyfriends could’ve been selected. And “He’s just not a BookTok favorite” is not a great excuse.

Well. Overall, this was a decently entertaining experience. I added a couple new things to my TBR, and I was reminded of long-lost high school reading assignments that were the subject of several interesting class discussions—including Like Water for Chocolate. Whew, buddy. That one was something else. Why were a bunch of silly ass high school sophomores allowed to read that? I still don’t know.

One good thing I got out of reading this book—it sent me down a rabbit hole of hunting for old issues of Right On! magazine, including this February 1977 issue. These magazines are chockful of Black entertainment history that I’ve only scraped the surface of. It’s beyond wild to know that my parents, aunts, and uncles were alive to experience the prime eras of all these Black celebrities. I know what I’m spending the rest of this summer doing…