This book was cheeky, tender and raunchy all at the same time -- it was delightful. This was such a wild ride, I feel like I'll have to read it again just to digest it!

This book is such a powerful and necessary read. Offering varied perspective on sex, love, and connection in brief and digestible stories that really pack a punch. Some readers may find the content a little unrestrained but I found the openness and honesty Purnell employs to be inviting and provocative. A great read overall.

I almost hate to review Brontez Pernell's 100 Boyfriends, because I'm not familiar with the author, and I don't think this book is aimed at me at all. Regardless, I'd hoped that the story would win me over, but it didn't.

Obviously trying hard to be very funny, but sadly I just didn't get it?

No doubt, others would love it.

This was such an interesting and fun Pride read. It’s a set of short stories.. all about boyfriends. @brontezpurnell tells us the good, the bad, the weird, and all the things you wouldn’t think could happen but did. Fabulous little glimpse into the dating world of gay men filled with gut punching prose, sensitivity, and lots and lots of sex.

A collection of short stories centering on the imperfect and often desperate meanderings of queer love. Overall, an okay read. I can appreciate the candor, the messiness, and the sense of fraught desperation, but the stories felt like just more of the same as I kept reading (and maybe that is the point!)

I found these stories to be captivating and emotionally resonant, though ultimately too many of them felt more like sketches/documentations than narratives for my personal tastes.

A rollicking tour of sexcapades across the world. Confessional, funny, uncensored in every way, and full of verve and life. Like catching up with a wild friend and getting all the juicy details.

To be honest, I had high hopes and wanted to love it, but stop reading after a few chapters. I couldn't get invested into the story, narrator and characters. While reading so many other good reviews, I was surprised that I did not feel the same. Unfortunately, this was a "pass" for me.

100 Boyfriends proves to be an interesting premise. Author Purnell journals almost stream of consciousness easily digestible stories about the men he's met and slept with over the years.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC!

cw/tw: drug and alcohol use & (lots of) sexual content

This was an interesting collection. It is basically a short story collection going through a variety of relationships (or lack thereof) between men. Going through hookups and the feelings of wanting more than sex or just wanting more sex.

I honestly struggle to describe this book further because it really is just a look at lots of relationships and how men interact with them differently. Though I did appreciate the variety of sexuality that we saw, there were men that only topped/bottom and vers men, and men of all sizes and body types. It was a nice read that still captured that 80s/90s hookup culture vibe that is present in queer lit from the time.

Purnell crafts a welcome addition to queer lit with 100 Boyfriends which explores being Black and queer and existing in a world that continuously threatens those experiences. Messy, funny, and moving.

This was an extremely wild book that kinda took me by surprise, but was enjoyable. It's certainly not for everyone with the language but if you overlook that, this is an incredibly wonderful look at humanity

Deranged, delightful, dangerous. Beautiful, bold. Strange, sensitive. Among the boyfriends in 100 Boyfriends we’ll find all of the above. The narrator, too, is all of these things. And funny. And serious. The stories are life affirming, maybe without meaning to be, showing how it’s possible to be simultaneously content and discontent with oneself, within oneself, and ultimately to be at peace with that. A Venn diagram of my life experiences and the narrator’s would have only a modest overlap yet there is something here I connected to in a way that feels essential and deep. This is a well-crafted collection of stories of modern, gritty, gay life.

Favorites:

• Inherited Winter Coat
• Boyfriend #77/ The Chef
• Boyfriend #666/The Satanist
• Letter of Resignation
• Boyfriend #19/The White Boy with Dreadlocks
• Early Retirement
• Epilogue/Rock ‘N Roll is Dead to Me-A European Tour Diary

#Netgalley & #FSGOriginals, Thank you for the opportunity to read and review.

I truly don’t know how to feel about this, and I feel a little bit out of my depth to give it a star rating but I am doing so based on the feelings I had while reading it. This is one of the most unique books that I’ve ever read, at times wildly funny and often simultaneously devastating.

My mind reeled at the amount of people and places and slice of life stories contained within a rather short span of pages--and the lightning-fast ways that situations the author described turned from happy to sad, euphoric to upsetting, and cruel to empathetic. Who knew someone could feel so many things!

I have a wildly different life experience than the author, and those are worth the ride! Thanks to fsg for the ARC, this is a fair and honest review.

Wow. Gorgeous writing filled with chaos and needs and heartbreak and realness. Loved the style of the book with short “stories” that clipped along and vacillated between raw and heartbreaking to ones that’ll make you laugh. The author is magnificent. Grateful to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advanced copy of this beautiful novel.

Really enjoyed this book, which vacillates wildly between violent and tender--seems like cult classic material.

The writing is so raw, clear! It kept me on engaged till the very end. The authors writing style is beautiful and knows how to keep the readers turning those pages.

Intimate, explicit, chaotic, messy, heartbreaking, full of self-destructive behavior and at times quite funny.
I loved the structure, a collection of mostly brief encounters and stories, a loose feeling to the prose, a messiness to it all. Definitely not for everyone, but I could sense the sadness and heartbreak beneath so many of the tales. Excellent raw writing, that I totally just went with....

Thank you to NetGalley, the Publisher and the Author for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I will be the first to say that I am not the target audience for this book. However, I will say that every single one of the stories captured within its page created such an emotional depth in me that I was not expecting. It was dark, funny, sad, happy, and everything in between. Purnell creates such beautiful scenes only a few pages in length. Each one could be its own novel, and while I may not read all of them, I would definitely give them a try.

In his Vulture article, E Alex Jung wrote, "“I found myself hungering for Purnell to identify the blocks, whether personal or sociological, that obstruct his protagonists." Purnell's editor, Jackson Howard, later tweeted: "Imagine writing a review of a book full of Black, queer, broke, HIV-positive characters then saying 'I found myself hungering for Purnell to identify the blocks, whether personal or sociological, that obstruct his protagonists.'" Howard's analysis of Jung's statement is required reading, a compendium to Purnell's wonderful, weird, sexy novel(?). 100 BOYFRIENDS stretches beyond the typical constraints of "literature," those that eschew sentimentality and demand every word lay cloaked in symbolism. Of course, Purnell does include symbolism. He does occasionally eschew sentimentality. But this collection of thoughts and stories and conversations, that which makes up 100 BOYFRIENDS, doesn't follow arbitrary rules for the sake of literature. And I don't particularly think it's my place to judge whether this collection made me feel seen or impacted in the way I am frequently analyzing literature.

My bookstagram review:
Happy pub day to this very smart, sexy, occasionally confusing whirlwind of a novel(?). It defies categorization and does so with style!!
I have made the conscious decision to have no other takes on this book!