Trashy, messy, entertaining audiobook filled with characters you’ll love to hate. The narrator, Daniel Henning, does a great job except for Bucky’s voice, but maybe that’s intentional. Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the advanced listening copy.

"The Gay Best Friend" was the perfect book to kick off my June reading because it is THE book you want in your pool or beach bag. Domenic is caught between his two best friends who are about to get married, he's just been dumped by his fiancé months before their wedding, and one of the groomsmen is a hunky pro-golfer who might just be flirting with him. What ensues is a funny, messy story about friendship, finding the right person, and coming out. This book was so well balanced between light moments and serious relationship dilemmas. I enjoyed every second of the audiobook and definitely want to check out more from this author.

This book was fun and heartwarming at times. Many of the characters frustrated me quite a bit in regards to how they treated one another. Overall, I enjoyed the book and recommend it as a fun beach read.

The perfect summer read! Equal parts funny, emotional, and such a fun read. I would definitely highly recommend this book to my patrons.

This book exceeded all my expectations. I typically prefer books that make me cry however this book had me laughing so hard at times and smiling ear to ear. It was quirky and fun and I just loved it. I had a great time. 5 stars.

The Gay Best Friend was exactly what I expected it to be. It was cute, a quick read, and nothing earth shattering. I found the main characters rather irritating rather than feeling any empathy for them.

Thank you NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and Nicolas DiDomizio for the advanced copy of The Gay Best Friend in exchange for my honest review.

I am sooo glad I was approved for an audio version of this book as well as eBook! It is equal parts funny, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. I absolutely loved Dom's journey throughout the book.

I think a lot of important conversations also happened between the different characters and I personally learned a lot from these too.

This is a perfect summer beach read, I read it almost all in one sitting!

The Gay Best Friend was such a fun, feel good book! It follows Dom, a gay protagonist, who is torn between his two best friends (Patrick and Kate), who are engaged, during the bachelor and bachelorette parties leading up to the wedding.

I loved Dom, as imperfect as he was. His character was easy to sympathize with and while he sometimes made poor decisions, it was easy to see why he did. The depiction of his anxiety was spot on and laid the ground work for a lot of why he did what he did.

I loved watching the romance between Dom and Bucky unfold. I really liked how it was interwoven into the bigger story of friendship.

The audio of this book was great- I really enjoyed it although I didn’t love Bucky’s voice. Dom’s was perfect and helped me picture his character.

Overall- I recommend this book!

Thank you netgalley for the arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This will be a great summer beach read for readers looking for a lot of laughs mixed with some hilarious drama. Dom, the titular gay best friend, has found himself in the middle--he is the best friend of the bride and the groom in an upcoming wedding. Each friend has their own expectations of secrets (bachelor parties!) and honesty (spy for me!) which will obviously come to no good. Mix in a closeted golfer, hidden hook-ups, and some really really unhappy married people, and you have a series of bachelor/bachelorette parties that leave some massive revelations in their wake.

I would recommend reading this one over using the audiobook--the narrator was not my favorite and it took away from some of my enjoyment of the plot.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an audio ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book....

However, I think the audio of this book really affected my opinion on the book itself. Dom Came off so whiny in narration and in parts of the storyline. Bucky's voice narration was less than pleasing, it was like your creepy step uncle vibes.

Storyline... I wish that Dom would have had a bit more *growth* through the story. His attitude was very *poor me* through the entire storyline. He outted Bucky on many different occasions when Bucky very clearly wasn't ready for that and honestly I'm surprised Bucky took that so well. I wish there would have been my growth for both of these characters individually and together.

Patrick and Kate seemed a realistic hot mess but I'm glad they were able to find growth and work things out in their relationship and their friendships with Dom & Bucky.

3.5/5 stars

General Description: If you have to chose between you two best friends getting married, could you? Doesn't that seem like a completely unfair situation? Well, unfortunately, Domenic finds himself in the middle of between his long time friend Patrick and best friend Kate. They're getting married, Domenic is the best man, and he's going to both the bachelor and bachelorette parties. However, when Domenic doesn't immediately pick between his friends, he's immediately the bad guy. On top of this, Domenic's own wedding plans fell through and now he's navigating his new single life. Will Domenic find love, friendship, and most importantly himself along the way?

The good:
- I really liked the concept.
- I appreciated the complexity of Domenic and his own self discovery journey.
- Honestly I do live for some drama lol.

The loss of a star and a half.
- minus .5 stars for each main side character (Patrick, Kate, and Bucky). I found them all annoying and unfair to Domenic personally. I know there's a redemption attempt in the book, but I would hope Domenic would get better folks in his life.

Overall: I think it's a cute character driven/plot mixed story and I would recommend it, especially with Pride month coming up!

Oh my gosh, literally laugh out loud funny! I'm so thrilled to have stumbled up on this inredible new author, Nicolas DiDomizio, The Gay Best Friend is spectacular! DiDomizio has one other book listed on Goodreads, Burn It All Down and I'm going to purchase it immediately.

Told completely from Dom's point of view, we follow his journey from his own engagment breaking up, to the bachelor party of his bestie, to the bridesmaid party of his other bestie, and finally to the conclusion (which I'm not going to talk about, lest I spoil anything here!!!). Trust me when I say I have never laughed (and gasped) out loud so many times in one single book in ages.

Beautifully developed characters, a completely original story, and several amazing messages, The Gay Best Friend is an absolute treasure.

If you have the option, and are a fan of audiobooks, definitely go for the audio version... Daniel Henning's performance is spectacular! Henning completely gets these characters and delivers an absolutely flawless performance. Five huge stars!

This was such a fun read! It was exactly what I needed to kick off my summer reading! The banter is what made it for me. The main character was just so lovable and the writer did such a great job of balancing the lovable character while giving him realistic flaws and faults. The story line was so cute!

This book was super cute. I read a review where someone said it was like “Emily Henry but gay” and I totally agree. It gave the best rom-com vibes, good humor, and realistic friendships. The narrator also did such a good job bringing this to life. It’s a great and lighthearted, drama filled, summer read. I read right through this (technically listened to it but still) it was wonderful.

The main character’s commentary and internal dialogue was everything. I loved the friendships and how they worked out in the end, the self-discovery the main character went through was written so well. Dom started as a people pleaser and through the months of trying to be there for both sides of two of his closest friends' wedding he figured out it wasn’t possible.

I was a little hesitant to like Bucky but in the end I loved seeing him accept himself even if part of it wasn’t totally his choice; he dealt with it so well in the end. His quotes were an iconic part of his southern charm, but my favorite was probably: “You can put your boots on in the oven but that doesn’t make them biscuits.”

And Kitty (hopefully I’m spelling that correctly) was one of my favorite side characters; she is an icon. Her friendship with Dom was hilarious.

Kudos to whoever wrote the ad copy for The Gay Best Friend, because that person picked up on all the potential of DiDomizio's premise: Dom, a gay man from a working-class family, is trapped by his own friendships and aspirations into acting bro-ey with the bros and best-girlfriendy with the straight woman friend, and into becoming a lawyer (class aspirations!) and abandoning the piano, to which his heart belongs. Just before The Gay Best Friend begins, this carefully constructed life has begun to implode: Dom's fiance calls off their wedding.

I don't get the feeling that the author wrote this as a potboiler but rather because the story was close to his heart, and I wish he had had the benefit of significant structural editing and line editing. A strong line editor would have saved him from wince-producers like "eyebrows ... in a bubbling rage" and eyes "narrow[ing] to a desperate squint," and might have pointed out problems like the exchange between Kate and Dom in which he speaks of her and her friends as a coven. She takes offense at the implication that they're witches, which she calls misogynistic, except that ... the idea that "witch" is an insult is in itself misogynistic, no? But these are details.

It's on the level of structure and characterization that things fall apart. Both the straight (and "straight") men at the opening bachelor party, organized by Dom for his childhood best friend, Patrick, are utterly awful, which may or may not be unrealistic but made it so unpleasant to spend time with them that I started to lose sympathy with Dom for being such a doormat. This may be partly the narrator's fault: he really leans into the bro-speak, and a different reading of the men's dialogue might come off less toxic.

But I loathed Kate, too. She pressures Dom to report on Patrick's bachelor-party activities, lets him know that he was Patrick's second choice of best man, and hounds him into revealing the details of his drunken hookup with one of the men at the party, despite Dom's clearly expressed reluctance.

I do see that the point of both sets of characters -- the bachelor-party crew, and Kate and her friends -- is precisely that Dom is subverting his own well-being to the project of pleasing them, but they have no apparent redeeming traits. Patrick defended Dom when they were kids -- well, that was then, this is now, and right now he seems to be a lying douchebro. Kate apologizes for some of her behavior toward Dom -- well, yeah, but her behavior is so abominable that it's hard to take the apology seriously. By an hour into the audiobook I just wanted to kick Dom in the pants for wasting his life on these people.

Two other points.

1. The other men at the party have hired strippers, one of whom bullies Dom first into letting her give him a lap dance (and who gropes him, noting that he's not hard) and then into licking off her whipped-cream bikini (he's worried about whipped cream staining the rug in the fancy beach house where the party's being held). You know where I'm going with this: it's sexual assault. Yes, it's another instance of Dom as a doormat, yes, the point is he's being ridiculous about a rug that is none of his responsibility, but no one is obliged to be a paragon of assertiveness in order to avoid being pushed into a sexual encounter he doesn't want. The episode is played for laughs but it's excruciating.

2. When Dom and Bucky have sex they discuss Bucky's sexuality -- he's in denial, of course. But what he's in denial about is being "gay." Er. Sure, he might be a Kinsey 6 who's been faking it completely up to this point in his life, but how come bisexuality doesn't cross either of their minds as an option? This conversation struck me as such a throwback to the 1970s, when the party line was that bisexuals didn't exist and people calling themselves bisexual were just on their way out of the closet.

I stopped listening at about 45%, so for all I know some or all of the issues I describe were resolved by the book's end (does Dom dump his awful "friends"? does Bucky come out as pan?). But you really have to give your audience something to hang on to in situations as cringey and outright poisonous as these. I just couldn't find that something here.

Thanks to Dreamscape and NetGalley for the audio ARC.

I am not a gay man, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but this reads like it was either written by a straight man trying to add diversity to their story, or a closeted gay man. I’m shocked that this is marketed as an LGTBQ+ book, because it is just full of homophobia, even in the main “relationship.”

This is not a romance. Nobody in this book should be in a relationship. The LI treats the MC horribly and you’re supposed to root for them to get together? In addition, Dom’s friendships are so dysfunctional and I couldn’t stop cringing the whole time because everyone was so awful to each other. I wanted Dom to drop Buckley and never speak to him again.

I think the main character, Dom, was reasonably flawed, but this entire plot line felt unrealistic for a group in their thirties.

Dom was a 30-year-old gay New Yorker who had just broke up with his fiancé Ted but that wasn’t going to stop him from helping his best friends Kate and Patrick celebrate their upcoming wedding. First stop was the bachelor party which was almost ruined before it began when he realized Kate wanted him to be the gayBe sitter and a spy while at the bachelor party. Plenty of things happened and un ed by Dom he was forced to keep secrets in order to keep the peace but at Patrick’s bachelor party he also met PGA champ Bucky Gram on the first night Bucky opened up to Dom about his relationship the trouble he was having with the PGA and when Dom gave him relationship advice he was surprised to learn the next day that Bucky had broken up with his Instagram a girlfriend who is also Kates good friend. He was even more surprised to learn that she blamed him but he had no time to contemplate that because Kate wanted to know what happened the night before and after one another friend of hers Melanie said she almost guessed the true events but Dom denied it all before the weekend is over however Dom and Buck will be even closer and by the time the bachelorette party rolls around he will not be able to be true to both of his best friends and keep all the secrets. This book was not only funny but also thought-provoking, poignant, timely and a total modern love story. When you know a book has a happy ending then it makes reading it about the journey in this journey is emotional but the payoff makes it also worth it. I know this is a situation that a lot of gay men go through and I am not talking about being the In Between for a couple but about having to go back in the closet due to loving a man who has yet to come out this was a great book and all I could do a review on the narrator alone he was so good and I loved him so much and I wish I could be his friend he seems like such a nice person and he does great voices inside such a fun tone for the book and when needed he even brought the house down for sober moments he was just awesome this is a total five star listen and one I am glad I got to listen to as an early reader. I received this book for Net galley and Dreamscape Media but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

I hate when books are automatically characterized as "romance" because some romance happens within. This is NOT a romance. Is there romance? Yes; some. But this is much more about personal growth than romance. (And disclaimer in case the whole "MM Romance" throws anyone off, this is about a gay character who finds someone, but it is very secondary and not graphic at all.)

Dom recently broke up with his fiancé. Fresh off the break up, he is forced into wedding festivities for his two best friends, who are marrying each other. Dom struggles to be loyal to each when things go awry during the Bachelor Party. Then, the Bachelorette Party doesn't go any better. Suddenly, everything is unravelling. His relationship is over, his friendships are in a precarious position, and he is falling for a straight guy.

Overall, I liked this and found it funny. It was a bit too dramatic at times. I will say that some of my feelings are likely partially caused by the narrator. (I listened to the audiobook.) Daniel Henning narrates the audiobook and while I didn't hate it, I didn't really like it either. Bucky's dialogue was the absolute worst. So cringy. And when Dom was spiraling, the narration made it super annoying. I'd probably recommend sticking to reading this in print, not listening.

I received an audio copy in exchange for an honest review.

4.5

I adored this read! As a person who used to have issues setting boundaries with friends I was cringing bc of hard I related to the awkward moments he found himself in. The first part of this was a lot of that with a sense of humor that made me giggle. The plot turns into more of a love story, giving some healing moments with his friends.

Did I want to y’all at his friends? Yes! Did I want to yell at him? Yes! Did I love every step, also yes!!! ♥️


I will say there was a moment that I was like this needs to go somewhere bc I am cringing too much and it quickly turned around!!! So excellent!

I will post a review on Amazon once I can, so I included my Amazon profile for when that happens.

The Gay Best Friend provides sassy quips, hard truths, and heartwarming moments. This book offers a unique perspective of what a balancing act being viewed as the token gay bestie really is.

Domenic (Dom) is newly single, canceling his wedding, and the best man to his frat-bro childhood best friend Patrick, and his fiancéé, the Vogue beauty guru Kate. Caught in a tough situation – promising Kate that nothing will happen at Patrick’s bachelor party, and promising Patrick that he won’t tell Kate anything that does happen at the bachelor party is the perfect recipe for a boiling pot of tea, and no one to spill it with.

I think this book is the perfect bundle of the straight-gay best friend dynamic, drama, some self-realization type of moments, character growth, and romance (thank you for the tropes). I laughed at some moments and slammed the cover of my kindle shut at others. I truly think this book has a scenario for every reader to connect with.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media & NetGalley for allowing me to review this book