The Impossible Boy – Anna Martin

This is not your average love story.

Ben Easton is not your average romantic hero. He’s a tattooed, badass, wannabe rock star, working in a perfectly horrible dive bar in Camden Town. His life is good, and he’s totally unprepared for how one man will turn it upside down.

Stan isn’t your average heroine. As a gender-fluid man, he proudly wears his blond hair long, his heels sky-high, and his make-up perfectly executed. A fashion industry prodigy, Stan is in London after stints working in Italy and New York City, and he quickly falls for Ben’s devil-may-care attitude and the warm, soft heart Ben hides behind it.

Beneath the perfect, elegant exterior, Stan has plenty of scars from teenage battles with anorexia. And it only takes the slightest slip for his demons to rush back in while Ben’s away touring with his band. With the band on the brink of a breakthrough, Ben is forced to find a way to balance the opportunity of a lifetime with caring for his beautiful boyfriend.

Reviewed by Chris

  

Looking for a change of scene—and a change of pace—Stan moved from Italy to London. While he loved his job at Vogue Italia, this new magazine should offer him a chance to do something a bit different. He wants to write about something new, something unique, and he hopes that London will offer just that. But fashion journalism isn’t the only thing that London offers. In a rundown pub that Stan wanders into he finds Ben Easton. Hunky bartender and all-round great guy. And he doesn’t seem to mind Stan’s rather unique look either. Kinda loves it, in fact.

All things should have been roses from there, but with Ben’s band’s attempts to make a name for themselves, and with Stan’s tendency to overwork himself, things can get a bit strained. Add to that an eating disorder rearing its ugly head, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Or, at least, tough decisions. Will Ben choose Stan or the band? Will Stan succumb to the pressure? Will Ben’s friend every get laid….tune in next time to find out!

Firstly, if the blurb for this book hadn’t already sold me, I have to admit that the (beautiful) cover for this book would have done the trick. Props to Garrett Leigh for coming up with a cover that really does an awesome job of encapsulating everything that I pictured for Stan.

Secondly, Anna Martin, dude, Stan was just…what an incredibly well written character. I can count on one hand the number of gender-fluid characters I have read stories about, and this one was just out of the park good. I could tell that the author fully dug into Stan, really made him come to life, without once dumbing down differences to appeal to the masses. I know that authors can shy away from non-cis stories because they fear they’ll get it wrong and the hordes will descend upon them, but honestly? all I’ve ever needed was an honest story and an author willing to do the hard work to get their characters to come to life. I’m all for people telling their own stories, but I never want others to run in fear from embracing the whole spectrum of people and characters out there just waiting for their stories to be told. This book was such a great example of how to do it perfectly. I hope that other authors out there will find encouragement in this book to do the same.

And thirdly, I’m not all that familiar with eating disorders, but I think that aspect of the book was handled very well. I really like how Ben and Tone (Ben’s best friend) showed the varying ways that people come at handling loved ones with eating disorders. Ben, because he was a mother hen, was much more believable as someone who would want to wrap Stan in bubble wrap, but also just not knowing what the fuck to do when presented with the man he loves being so sick. Tone had a different approach, and I think his laid-back attitude showed that treating people like humans with both strengths and weakness is important. I’m not sure Ben would have been able to really do this, because of who he was—especially right after the incident—and I think it was important that it was shown by someone. It was also a great way to show the friendship that had grown between Stan and Tone.

I can’t say how much I enjoyed this story. I’ve loved quite a few of Anna Martin’s past books, but this step out of the box really showed her writing chops. I can only hope that this trend continues. The attention to detail was masked by the easy flow of the story, but it was clearly there underpinning everything. Very much recommended.

RATING:

Anna Martin is from a picturesque seaside village in the south west of England and now lives in Bristol. After spending most of her childhood making up stories, she studied English Literature at university before turning her hand as a professional writer.

Apart from being physically dependent on her laptop, Anna is enthusiastic about writing and producing local grassroots theatre (especially at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she can be found every summer), visiting friends who live in other countries, Marvel Comics, learning new things, and Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.

Although her most recent work is in the LGBT Adult Fiction genre, in the past Anna has worked on a variety of different projects including short stories, drabbles, flash fiction, fan fiction, plays for both children and adults, and poetry. She has written novels in the Teen/ Young Adult genre, Romance, and Fantasy novels.

Anna is, by her own admission, almost unhealthily obsessed with books. The library she has amassed is both large and diverse; “My favourite books,” she says, “are The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.” She also several well-read copies of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park books and re-reads the Harry Potter novels with almost startling regularity.

Anna claims her entire career is due to the love, support, pre-reading and creative ass-kicking provided by her closest friend Jennifer. Jennifer refuses to accept any responsibility for anything Anna has written.

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