I was lucky to receive a copy of The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain from Net Galley and Kensington Books.

I. Loved. This. Book.

Albert Entwistle is a British postal worker about to turn 65. He has no family, no friends. His life is a monotonous routine. He is merely existing. Then two things happen: Albert is being forced into retirement when he turns 65, and his beloved cat, Gracie, dies. This gets him to think about his regrets in life - particular letting go of the one person he truly loved: his high school love, George Atkinson. Thus begins a journey of self acceptance for Albert, as he searches for his lost love.

Albert grow up with a homophobic cop as a father, and an emotionally abusive mother mother. Since the events that transpired that caused him to lose George, Albert has never left anyone into his life and heart, and has never admitted aloud that he is gay. He has led a lonely, solitary existence, never allowing himself to be who he was truly meant to be.

That all begins to change in his search for George. We are introduced to Nicole, a young single mother on Albert’s postal route. She’s a strong, Black woman, determined to make a good life for herself and her daughter, Reenie. She is also uncertain in her budding relationship with a new man. Nicole becomes an integral part of Albert’s journey.

We meet many other characters that have been in the periphery of Albert’s life until now. Albert’s road to self-acceptance allows him to start letting people in, and it also starts inspiring others to better themselves.

This is a story about love, found family and being your authentic self. And it was absolutely beautiful. Matt Cain writes in such a way that you feel as if you are walking alongside Albert on his journey - experiencing all the highs and lows eight with him. I couldn’t put it down.

I was bawling at the end of this book, because my heart was filled with so much love and hope.

I highly, highly recommend The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle for those looking for a different sort of coming-of-age tale, with queer and diverse representation, that is full of love, hope and joy.

Thank you Net Galley for an audio ARC of The Secret Life Of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain. This is a gem of a book and is my favorite of the year so far. This book emotionally hit me in the heart. I listened as tears streamed down my face. To feel as though you have to hide yourself is a shame in itself because everyone has a gift in them to share with others. No matter the reason you hide.

5 star
This is a charming book that hits all the right notes. A great and diverse cast of characters, and a roller coaster of emotions. An adventure I did not want to end.

Albert Entwistle lives a quiet, private little life, safe in his comfortable routine – going to work, delivering the mail along his postal route, saying hello to the people of his small English town (in a way that is polite but does not invite conversation), and going home to his cat Gracie. But when he’s forced into retirement, he finds himself at loose ends, and thinking more and more about the man he loved and lost when he was younger.

Albert is painfully shy, partly due to social anxiety, but also because he was raised having to suppress his true self (and maybe just a little because he’s extremely British and reserved.) Albert was closeted and his father was extremely homophobic (along with his classmates, and the rest of 1970s society in general) and he’s still dealing with the effects of that trauma more than 50 years later, afraid to even think about his sexuality and his lost love, let alone tell anyone about it. But when he decides to make a change in his life, he finds the strength to overcome his fear and open up to people, and it’s lovely to see. Nearly everyone meets his tentative, frightened attempts to socialize and live his truth with love and open arms. His friendship with Nicole, a young single mom along his route, is especially touching, and meaningful to them both. I love a good intergenerational friendship, and Albert and Nicole care so much about each other and truly have each other’s backs. It’s adorable.

I really enjoyed this book! I am including a lot of content warnings at the end of the review, because horrible things happened to Albert in his youth, and other horrible things are said in passing (not toward any of our major characters, but just generally stated bigotry) but I don’t want them to scare anyone off because overall, I found it to be a very uplifting read.

Representation: Lots of LGBTQ+ characters, gay main character, main character with anxiety, black major characters, trans minor character, drag queen character

CW: homophobia, child abuse, pet death, expression of racist, sexist, and homophobic views, mild fatphobia

Heartwarming and sweet! If you liked The House in the Cerulean Sea, this has a very similar feel. 4 stars!

This is a really sweet story about Albert Entwistle, a 64 year-old postman in northern England in a small town. He's a gay man who experienced trauma in his youth due to his family's lack of acceptance of him, as well as some of the laws at the time against being gay. He has kept that in the closet for 50 years and has not come out to anyone, and has pretty much closed himself off to the world in general. His job is important to him, but he tries to avoid conversations, and doesn't really make friends. At the start of the book, he receives a letter from HR that at his 65th birthday, which is only a few months away, he will face mandatory retirement. The one thing that in his life has kept him going won't be available to him anymore. He's really facing a lot of loneliness and grappling with what does that mean for him in his life, so he decides to track down his first boyhood love George Atkinson.
I really appreciate how the story had Albert reckoning with what it meant for him to have been closeted for 50 years, what that meant for his own sense of self, for his connection, or lack thereof, to both his neighbors and the gay community, and how he worked through all of that. I will give some trigger warnings, there is a death of an animal and some discussion of pregnancy loss. So if those are things that you would like to avoid, be mindful of that. Also, there are depictions of assault based on homophobia.
There are a couple of really sweet storylines with different people that Albert connects with in his community, which I really enjoyed watching as those developed. At the end of the book, there are also snippets of interviews that Matt Cain, the author, had with various men who grew up gay in the 50s- 60s and 70s, and what their experiences were like in terms of police raids, hiding, or ostracization from family. These interview snippets are really powerful as well.
I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a sweet story of second chances, in learning about history, in a story of personal growth and wrestling with identity. I also recommend for anyone who enjoys good characters, funny moments and a heartwarming story. I give this book five stars.

This was a really heartwarming story that I really loved and flew through! It's about an older man facing retirement and deciding to finally embrace who he is by coming out to the world. I love that it tackles a lot of really complex yet relatable themes throughout with an uplifting message behind it all.

This book was absolutely beautiful. While the major plot points were largely simple and fairly predictable, I really enjoyed being along for the ride and it allowed all of the little details and personal growth to really shine through. As a character-driven story, the depth and genuine sweetness of the writing was so heart-warming and refreshing. I think I cried at least 3 times while reading and was surprised at how much of an emotional punch certain moments delivered.

Albert starts off the story as a shy, closed-off, lonely individual who is hiding himself from the world, and has been hiding himself for. almost 50 years. The way that Albert's internalized homophobia was dealt with, and his story slowly unfolded through the series of flashbacks, was perfectly paced and heartbreakingly real. Even though it was not surprising that he had dealt with such negative attitudes about gayness / queerness when he was young, it didn't stop his experiences from being any less devastating. I loved how his relationships with those in the community (especially Nicole, but also Daniel and Danny, Edith, and Marjorie) helped him grow, change, and develop, not only to accept his sexuality but also to stand up for what he believes in and become invested in other peoples lives.

I think although the core element of the plot is Albert's search for George, the real heart of the story is Albert's relationship with Nicole and Reenie. I wasn't expecting Nicole's prominence in the book (as she wasn't mentioned in the synopsis) but found I really appreciated her perspective and felt her journey throughout the book served as a really great foil for Albert's. I loved her giving him a make-over and teaching him how to use social media (I laughed out loud at her string of emoji texts that Albert didn't understand), as well as showing him the love and trust that he really needed to see that he was worth caring about.

The only things that I was a bit bothered by in this book was using the term "mixed-race" without specifying which races the people in question were-- I'm not sure if it's more common to use this term in the UK for folks who are mixed Black & white backgrounds, but as a mixed Asian & white person, I was left trying to figure out what the people described were meant to look like (unless that was the point, in which case, that's fine!) There was also a moment at a party where someone dressed up as the Native American in the Village People with a headdress where I felt like... maybe that wasn't entirely necessary, since it's pretty widely understood that that costume is offensive & cultural appropriation.

On the whole though, I really enjoyed reading this book and would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a heartwarming read. 4.5 out of 5 stars from me. I'm so happy to see other LGBTQ+ stories featuring adults coming out later in life- I feel like this was a really beautiful missing piece to a lot of the queer and trans focused books I've been reading lately.

What a lovely story that felt so fresh. I can’t recall the last book I read that focused on LGBTQ elders in a beautiful way. The way the author used age as a catalyst vs a turn down of life events really made this book into a page turner.

This was a really sweet book. I definitely got attached to the characters, and thought the background information about growing up as a gay person in England several decades ago was really interesting and important. I did think in some parts it was a bit cliche/too neatly resolved, though, and the writing, while charming in some sections, didn't always work for me. On the whole, I didn't love it, but I did like it, and am glad to have read it!

Sweet as pie, heartbreaking as always. The end brought tears to my eyes. An absolutely perfect book on what it means to be LGBTQ, to be a member of humanity. Albert stole my heart and ran for the hills. And then George stomped on my hand when I tried to get it back. There's no one else I'd rather trust with it, though.

When I started Albert Entwistle, I was completely enchanted and engrossed. It felt like reading some mixture of A Man Called Ove and Eleanor Oliphant, with the added heft of forbidden queer love. I was charmed by Albert and the way he interacted with and viewed the world. He's the type of character you endlessly want to hug and be around. But the longer things went on, the more everything felt a little too storybook. There were times where I could picture it being narrated by a Christmas/Hallmark movie character. Or maybe it felt like something out of a kids book or video game. Like, 'today I will decide to change my entire personality, okay, done, what's next??' Albert spends a lot of time really digging into his past and trauma and isolation, but the realizations he had felt like too-fast 'aha!' moments, rather than realistic. And while I loved Nicole and her family and her friendship with Albert, I think the attempt to make their stories play off each other was a bit of a stretch. All background characters were also deeply defined by gender roles in a way that felt cheap and unfortunate. But that doesn't mean I didn't have a smile on my face for the vast majority of this book, and that I don't adore Albert, and that I didn't love a really real story of being gay in the 70s.

I feel as though there is a lot to like about this book - but I'm not the kind of person who would find it amusing. I was intrigued by the type of story this was. There's definitely a need for stories to be written about folks coming into themselves later in life. I hope that publishers continue to support books along these lines.

I think that possibly for me, it was just a bit too cliche if that makes sense. Every supporting character was a bit too much, too diverse and things began to seem a bit unrealistic.

That being said, this book is well-written and entertaining to a point. I'm sure there will be a very large audience for it.

First, Thank you to NetGalley for the advance reading copy of this. This was a 5 star read for me-absolutely delightful. It was like Man Called Ove meets, well, I forget what else.
A man who's spent his whole career (since he was a teenager) being a postman is told he must retire. Without the routine of that his life looks pretty empty. His crippling shyness has always prevented him from making friends or really any personal connections. The impending retirement seems like a life ender but then in the most heartwarming of ways he begins to make connections. Most importantly, he opens up about who he actually is (it's not really a surprise) and sees the possibility for love and happiness. Realistically this may not have been the most realistic story. Everyone always says the right thing? Just open up a little and wonderful things happen? But really it was so touching and sweet and you really root for Albert (and rage against the terrible behaviors of the past.) And speaking of the past, don't skip the afterword with older men recalling gay history. It's heartbreaking and eye opening and really so recent.


Highly recommend.

Cozy queer book fans, this one's for you. While some parts of this were substantially more serious than I expected, the overall story was warm and comforting, with so many touching moments. It's about learning to live life on your own terms and finding happiness outside of your comfort zone (but within your limits). Albert is an instantly lovable main character, and he grows so much over the course of the book.

CW: homophobia, pet death, terminal childhood cancer and resulting off-page death, mentions of past miscarriages, discussion of AIDS epidemic, racism, fatphobia, sexism

I wasn’t a fan of another book I read similar to this, Less, but this one was so well executed. I felt everything with the characters, and (with more than a few tears) understood deeply what they went through. Loved this so much <3

I really loved this book! I enjoyed reading from the perspective of an older MC and I really liked the writing style. The beginning could be difficult to get through if you are not a reader who enjoys slow narrative style but if you do like that, then I highly recommend it! I also want to note that the portrayal of the UK postal system was very similar to how the US postal service is and was very accurate. I think the inclusion of these details added a lot to the story. I related strongly to Albert even as a young American girl. I enjoyed getting to know him through his journey of relearning to express himself and his search for George.

This was an extremely sweet book that caught me by surprise with how much emotion I was able to feel given how relatively short it is. Albert is a soon to be retired postman, painfully shy, and just finally crawling his way out of the closet. I have never encountered a book that was written as a coming out story from an elder’s POV. I think that’s something I loved most about this book. I did enjoy Nicole’s part of the story although I wish she had felt less like a caricature of a single mom if that makes sense. She felt a little one dimensional given how important she was to the story. The romance that was central to this book is not a physical thing. It is an emotional journey for the main character as he deals with it both present-day and in the past. I really appreciated the author including interviews with older gay men that he spoke with to give more perspective on what it was like being a gay person when it was barely legal.

My only last criticism for this book is while I hugely appreciate the attempt to break down toxic masculinity through the character of Jack I felt it was very heavy handed both before Albert came out and after. In that same vein many of the other characters such as coworkers neighbors etc. were very overwritten but it did not distract from my enjoyment of the story overall.

Rep: multiple gay men characters, black female MC, trans side character

TW: homophobia, mention of transphobia, police brutality, death of pet (omg was not expecting this one and it really hurt)

Thanks Netgalley for this ARC!

What a sweet love story. While it was a bit of a slog in the beginning, once Albert learns of his retirement and begins his coming-out journey, this book really takes off. Albert forges so many new friendships in just a short time, making his character even more endearing. The reader is led on a journey to find his first and only love, George, and I’d be lying if I said I never doubted for a moment he’d find him.

To Matt Cain, thank you for telling a story that is often overlooked. The LGBTQIA community still face many battles, but it is through telling stories like this that we see the change that is possible. We’ve come a far way, but the fight isn’t over.

**I received this advance copy free from Kensington Publishing Corp. via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and Matt Cain for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
This was an enjoyable story.
Not only do we see Albert search for his long lost love but also get a historic background to what it was like to be gay and how he eventually comes to accept himself and be proud of himself