Alexis Hall

I refer you to Kat for this one.

There's oodles of charm here (and I'm a huge fan of JL Merrow) but somehow it didn't quite come together for me. There are some absolutely lovely scenes and the dialogue is zingy and I appreciated in principle the flamboyance of the narrator (although, in practice, he wore on me a bit - it was like he was perpetually doing jazz hands, and I was bit like ... for the love of god, take a xanax, I'm trying to read a book). But there didn't seem all that much connection between the two leads, David's primary characteristic appears to be that he looks hot while doing karate and a lot of the tension feels quite contrived: there's a series of misunderstandings around Jude's age (he's half Japanese so he apparently he looks fifteen) and an ex called Knut and finally a performance-poetry-declaration that didn't feel entirely earned.

On the other hand, a JL Merrow which does not quite come together is still, like, a gazillion times better than almost anything else in the universe. And they never ever make me feel icky or alienated or upset. And I cannot over-emphasise just how much this means to me.

And Bubbles the dog is sublime.