Reviewed by Sadonna

TITLE:  Please Come to Boston

AUTHOR:  Gary Goldstein

PUBLISHER:  Haldeigh House

LENGTH:  292 pages

RELEASE DATE:  September 10, 2024

BLURB:

First times, fast times, past times…

Boston, 1975. Nicky DeMarco, a naïve but game 18-year-old, is navigating his first semester of college when he falls into a surprising—and life-altering—romantic triangle with Joe, a charismatic, big-hearted jock, and Lori, a warm and adventurous psych student. The three embark on a secret, joyous, and passionate journey of self-discovery as Nicky questions his sexuality—and all that entails. It turns into an emotional high-wire act and loyalty test with unexpected consequences for the trio’s present and future, one which we flash forward to some fifty years later when Nicky and Joe reunite back where it all began.

PLEASE COME TO BOSTON is a vivid and evocative snapshot of that youthful time of life when the world is laid out in front of us with all its amazing, intoxicating, and terrifying possibilities—and the thorny complications that can follow.

Gary Goldstein’s third novel is a funny, nostalgic, and bittersweet look at first love at a time when exploring one’s sexual orientation and authentic self was riskier, more uncharted territory, yet with so many of the same defining issues that resonate today.

REVIEW:

Honestly I really hate to share anything about the actual content of this book because I think it’s best read without a lot of preconceptions.

This story takes place over two timelines – basically Nick’s freshman year at Boston University starting in 1975 and the present day when he visits Boston for the first time in decades for a reunion.  What happens in the intervening years is covered pretty much during the reunion chapters, but the bulk of the story is one of Nicky moving away from home for the first time, meeting people from different backgrounds and places and how he change and realizes a lot of things about himself in those first few months.  The one thing he figures out is that he’s pretty sure he’s not exactly straight.  His best friends are Lori Conover, the girl he meets on the elevator of his freshman door after moving in – to the first co-ed floor in his dorm – and Joe O’Rourke, the Freshman Orientation guide who is with him when he meets Lori.  The fact that he is attracted to both of them is something that he comes to figure out during the first few weeks.  What he doesn’t expect is for any of it to lead anywhere.  But it leads to so much.  In that first semester of his freshman year, Nicky grows up a lot.  He starts to accept who he is, but he does realize that it may cause problems for him.  It’s the 1970s and being not straight was a WHOLE LOT harder than it is today.

I really enjoyed this book.  I was in high school in the 1970s but I remember that time very clearly.  Of course I had my own teenage and family angst going on and the whole world seemed a bit fraught post Vietnam and Watergate and a whole slew of economics issues.  I was pretty sheltered and the only people who smoke pot in my town were not those on the college track (although by the time I got to college in 1980, people were doing lines of cocaine in dorm hallways, so far be it from me to cast asperions about the 70’s 😉 ).  Weed seemed pretty tame by the 80’s, although I did have some girls on my dorm room floor start a fire late one night by NOT checking to make sure their joints were completely out before they left the dorm for a party during MY freshman year 😉 They were the girls from NY 😛

I loved the way the author incorporated music into this story too.  The music of our youth really does have such an ability to pull us back with nostalgia to those times.  Personally those were some of the worst years of my life, so I can’t say I remember them with fondness, but I certainly remember them with clarity.  First concerts, first albums, lots of firsts for a lot of people in those formative years.  All of that was believably described in this book.  For those of us “of a certain age” I think this will ring very true.  For younger readers, I think this book very clearly conveys how different the world was back then.  And how much we do owe the brave souls of the era who lived their truth – or a version of it – so that the world we live in today isn’t so judgmental and people are much more able to live authentic lives.  Not everyone sadly.  But certainly it’s a different world today than it was 50 years ago.  What different lives closeted men and women might have lived if they’d been allowed to do so without such negative repercussions.

I will note that in some ways, this doesn’t necessarily qualify as a romance since there isn’t an HEA.  It’s definitely got bittersweet moments.  The path not taken is writ large, particularly at the end of the story.  But it’s a story that I think will ring true for those who choose to read it – which I highly recommend.  The overwhelming prospect of becoming an adult and figuring out what that even means – a coming-of-age story that definitely tugs at the heartstrings and sheds light on what it means to grow up and into oneself.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

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