Books like Puppet Boy

This novel weaves three unique stories told by three very distinctive gay men who live in London at completely different periods of time. What unites them? Internalised homophobia, something as a gay person I remember from a long time ago. Each character yearns for someone. Each in a distinct way. Rent boy, Jack, longs for his regular client, Oscar Wilde. Lonely artist Colin desires the model he paints while staying closeted in the 1950s. And David’s desire lands him in prison in the 1980s.

Each story travels at the same pace with each character reflecting similar highs and lows. And you don’t have to be gay to identify with this well-written novel.

This is the first of a trilogy of which any book in the series is worth reading. In this farce written long before marriage equality, a gay man hatches an outlandish scheme to throw a wedding, just for the expensive gifts. What follows is a comedy that incorporates blackmail and the mafia. You read this novel for pure pleasure, enjoying the clever one-liners while the plot spirals out of control. Flamboyant, camp, and ridiculously funny.

To be fair, there is a love story featured in this novel, but it’s not at the heart of this tale. This is a historical piece full of captivating characterisation. Robin is a burly man who’s clumsy and unpopular in the small coastal town he lives in. But a horrendous storm is brewing, and Robin takes it upon himself to gather the townsfolk and get them to shelter at The Moth and Moon, the local pub. The world building is excellent. All characters are well realised. Most are eccentric. None are forgettable. And these elements make this tale truly charming.

Charlie is homeless and lives in an abandoned carnival, just one of the places full of wonder and mystery in this novel. He is sometimes fed by a mature-aged gay couple and has an unrequited love. But he dies and we continue reading his story in a surreal version of the world he inhabited while alive. Yes, Charlie is a ghost. The carnival he still lives in has a life of its own, and he needs to protect the living who showed him kindness. A truly beautiful tale.

T.J. Klune has a gift for making me feel better about humanity, and this book is no exception.

Cozy fantasies set in tea shops often feel samey, to me, but Whispering Door brings all the things I love in cozy fantasy—tasty food, a lovable quirky cast, a setting with lots of personality—and it feels fresh thanks to a fun, charming twist: a redemption story straight out of A Christmas Carol (one of my all-time favorites).

Plus, the tea and food sound delectable, truly lovingly described. Give me a food-driven love story any day!

Without my glasses, I’m functionally blind. Without his hearing aids, my husband struggles to hear. We shouldn’t work as a couple. Or are our limitations our strengths?

In Kaye’s book, Patrick Stanford is considered by his rotating crew of housecleaners to be an unreasonable client. Until Jake Manning is hired, no one realizes that Patrick as a blind man needs his house to be kept in strict order or he harms himself just walking from room to room.

Although Patrick has a PhD while Jake has barely a high school diploma, what matters is how they understand each other’s needs and work to answer them.

(An aside: Besides, how could I pass up a book in which Pat (my name) and Jake (my husband’s name) fall in love? I couldn’t!)

Maybe Next Year, by Dave Hughes, a coming-of-age love story of two young men that touched my heart. It's all about Bryan and Chris, two high school guys that have been best friends for several years, and what happens when they discover their feelings for each other are more than friendship. They come from two very different family backgrounds and will have a lot to navigate.

The story sounds simple: two college-age boys – Ben, a football player and brainy Ronny, his tutor – gradually fall in love even though their relationship is sometimes stormy, and readers may wonder anxiously if it will endure. But true love has a stubborn way of enduring and perhaps it will in this case, too. So, a simple story? No, for it’s as complex as the human heart. What also sets this one apart is its gorgeous writing, which is an undivided pleasure to read and which brings Ben and Ronny to vivid, fully realized life. Readers won’t forget them nor will they forget this haunting novel.  

Sexual desire, acted on or repressed, is either the text or subtext of every gay man's life.

Edmund White treats sex explicitly and with bracing honesty. His frankness—for example, in describing his fumbling, agonized, danger-courting attempts as a kid to find love—recalled my own youthful risks and failures, but freed those memories of shame.

I've read few of White's many books. (Guess I was jealous of his output and acclaim; better I should have emulated his driving curiosity and intelligence.) His recent death, at 85, prompted me to read this narrative of his long, unruly, ceaselessly questing life.

A sharp observer of trends and sub-cultures, White moved among the famous—writers, artists, intellectuals—and descriptions of and dish about them are an extra, but only slightly guilty, pleasure.

All the Croy books are so descriptive and imaginative, well-plotted, and with great characters the reader cares about. It's been fun seeing them grow, change and develop through the series, set in the small, fictional town of Croy. Rumor has it this is the last in the series, but I'm hoping for more.