I LOVED THIS BOOK!
Alexis Hall never fails to disappoint me and this might just have been my favorite book of their's I've read.
The story felt vunerable and realistic while also being funny at times.
Something I always love about Alexis hall is that the characters are all so well rounded that I feel like I know exactly who they are.
The only thing I would have loved to have seen would have been Alfie opening up to Fen about his parents, but I do understand why they chose not to include that in the book.
I think both chracter's trauma was dealth with in a really sensitive and beautiful way.

I was honestly captivated by this book from the moment I picked it up. Super hard to put down!

I'm sure I will be thinking of this book for a long time.

4.25 stars

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Alexis Hall knows how to write romance with deeply flawed characters!! Alfie is not really a likeable character, at times he’s mean and stuck up and he’s definitely got a lot of internalized homophobia. But he’s also so human that it’s kind of hard to hate him. He makes a lot of mistakes but throughout the book you can see how being with fen is forcing him to grow and learn and become better. The journey these characters go on is an absolute emotional roller coaster but it feels so real and raw and heartfelt. Hall shows the messy side of love and how flawed people are still deserving of love

Thank you to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Casablanca for the ARC!

Alfie returns to his home town of South Shields (North of England) for his best friends' wedding. An investment banker, big, muscled and tattooed he looks the typical alpha Northern male, but he's also gay, something that his working class father is having trouble dealing with.

Overwhelmed by the contrast between his glamorous, superficial, wealthy life in London and the grittiness of his home town Alfie leaves the wedding and goes into a typical pub, only to see a delicate man wearing a pink jumper and hipster glasses with pink tips to his hair drinking a glass of rose wine. What starts off as a one-night stand turns strange when Alfie's lover turns out to be a boy he mercilessly bullied at school. He might have bullied Fen back then, but at least Fen knows who he is and is comfortable with himself whereas Alfie has no idea how to reconcile being gay with his inner voice and his ingrained beliefs.

In fact, this book is all about reconciliation for Alfie. Reconciling his career in the South with his home in the North, his relationships with his family and friends, being gay with his instincts, what he likes with what he thinks he should like.

I loved Alfie and I loved Fen, I loved their tentative relationship which is very much two steps forward and one step back, I loved everything about this romance.

I read this nearly four years ago, probably just about when I first discovered Alexis' writing. They have recently rereleased the Spires books with new covers and so I was eagerly looking out for this to drop on NetGalley. Despite me mis-recalling the original book, my review above remains 100% accurate for the updated version. I still love Alfie and Fen and I love their romance. I must reread the previous version at some point. And what is the book I've read where the big tattooed guy is the florist I wonder?

After all these years I still think this and Glitterland are my favourites.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

A beautiful exploration of figuring out how to live authentically amid the pressures of the world. The new edition adds author annotations and expands some scenes—I was really touched by some of the changes made to the end of Chapter 23 especially.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC. All opinions my own.

I don’t have the words to express how much I adore this book. As a queer person who grew up in a conservative town I related to hard to Alfie's struggles to figure out how to come to terms with his identity as an adult. I was wary when I saw the premise of this book initially but Alexis Hall handles the past bullying with care, never letting Alfie off the hook for his past misbehavior. He allows both Fen and Alfie to be complex characters with complicated feelings and reactions as they process the changes in their lives (Alfie coming to terms with being gay and Fen dealing with the loss of his mom as well as his school bully not being a completely crap human being). The yearning that both of these characters feel for each other and for a home is so palpable my heart is still aching in the best way from all those feelings. Pansies is a book that tackles a lot of big issues - grief, social class differences, masculinity, unlearning heteronormativity and homophobia and so much more. There's so much to unpack in this story and I will keep coming back to it because the way these characters struggle is so deeply relatable. Every reread gives me something new to think about (there have been 5 so far) as I come to it in different points in my queer journey. Ultimately this is a book about the freedom and joy you can find when you are brave enough to be yourself and that will never not be important to read about.

This, like all the other books in the Spires series, is heartbreakingly beautiful. I'm honestly speechless in trying to write this review because all I have going through my head is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. It could have something to do with the fact that I stayed up to midnight to finish this and then was awake before my 6am alarm this morning with why my brain can't cough up more words.

Also, one of my favourite things about the revamp of this series is the annotations from Alexis in each book. This has given a really cool insight, not only to the characters and their stories but also into the creative mind of the amazing Alexis themselves.

I received an eARC from Netgalley and have given an honest review.