His attempts at making things right felt too.clumsy and daft for my liking. Now I wouldn't go so far as to say dislike but I couldn't find myself necessarily attached to him either. While I don't condone his past actions, I can understand that he's a victim in his own right.

How much it fucking hurt.'Īs an adult, Alfie has a big heart, but he hasn't made much progress in wholly accepting himself. 'She wouldn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain. This book is Alfie's redemption arc: recognizing the damage of his past actions, the tight hold toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia have on him even after coming out of the closet, and the life he truly wants to lead. I believe kids can grow up to be very different people as adults, so the 'former bully' part allowed me to proceed with my usual reservations at a lower setting. A former bully-to-lover story that I surprisingly enjoyed more than I thought I would. But how can he, when all they've got in common is the nowhere town they both ran away from. And now it's a proper mess: Fen might have slept with Alfie, but he'll probably never forgive him, and Fen's got all this other stuff going on anyway, with his mam and her flower shop and the life he left down south.Alfie just wants to make it right. At school, when Alfie was everything he was supposed to be, and Fen was the stubborn little gay boy who wouldn't keep his head down. It should be a one-night thing, but Alfie hasn't met anyone like Fen before.Except he has. But Fen's gorgeous, with his pink-tipped hair and hipster glasses, full of the sort of courage Alfie's never had. It's the last place he's expecting to pull. He's got a six-figure salary, a penthouse in Canary Wharf, the car he swore he'd buy when he was eighteen, and a bunch of fancy London friends.It's rough, though, going back to South Shields now that they all know he's a fully paid-up pansy.

Pansies by Alexis Hall