5+++
The first page made me shiver already.
Amazing, this is poetry from the highest shelf. This book gave me goosebumps.

After Alfie flies away from his best friend's wedding he ends up in a bar.
Beside him sits a stunning beautiful young man, he offers him a drink. This drink was refused.
When Alfie leaves the bar, the young man comes after him and what follows is a hot, and sexy night. They are amazing together. And Alfie is under the spell of this young man.

Fen recognized the man who entered the bar immediately, the bully.

It's harsh to see Fen struggling with his feelings.
And ditto for Alfie who has trouble seeing reality. He is quite narrow-minded and doesn't understand himself or the world around him.

The unbalanced relationship is hard. I doubted their compatibility outside the physical side.
The characters are well-developed. Their dialogues are real and diverting.
The author has a poetical way of writing, quite impressive.

Highly recommended!

I have loved every single one of the Spires stories as they've been updated and re-released (and how gorgeous are the new covers!?) and Pansies is no exception. Each book in the series stands alone, with minimal overlap of side characters, albeit with the overarching theme of exploring many and varied types of queer relationships in a 'real' British setting (Hall notes in the foreword: "As a British author writing for what I am deeply aware is a primarily American audience, I really want to make sure that I’m portraying a version of my country that doesn’t just get reduced to chocolate box villages, ancient university towns, and London. It’s important to me that I write at least a little bit about those Cities You’ll Never See On Screen, the steel towns and port towns and resort towns."). As a fellow Brit this means I feel incredibly 'at home' in all the books, but I think for readers all over the world it's wonderful to see a different slice of British culture in books - and in the case of this book - enjoy some of the dialects and local peculiarities that come with that. Going into this book I was apprehensive, as 'former bully to lover' as a trope is one I avoid like the plague, because it's usually so bluntly treated (by authors I suspect have never been bullied) and something overcome quickly in a fireball of irresistible lust, but I trust this author so I dove in despite reservations and was delighted to find this book just as magic as all the others in the Spires universe. The whole book is a slow roll of unfolding, learning, relearning and developing not just for the MCs but the families around them and for the reader too. There's no single action that can make an apology for bad behaviour 'right', or make someone who thinks of queerness as 'wrong' suddenly be okay with it, just as there's no one day where you wake up and grief is 'gone' and these complex personal journeys happening side by side for Alfie and Fen make this book quite emotionally intense, but with all the unexpected joy, wit and easter eggs of cultural minutiae that Hall is a master of writing. Unusually for a queer book, the book opens with a heterosexual love story, but trust me, that all makes sense in time (and may break your heart too). Like all the Spires books, I have far too many highlighted passages, a mixture of quotes heartfelt, funny, deliciously dirty or referencing things touchingly familiar.

Pansies is my favorite of all the existing Spires books, though I love them all for different reasons (and Waiting for the Flood is a very, very, very close second). Part of why I love Pansies so much is because the characters fall in love so quickly and yet it feels real and I never, not for one second, feel unconvinced by the depth of feeling and commitment Alfie and Fen have for each other. How amazing is that, considering their bully/bullied history? There's something really vulnerable in opening yourself up to experiencing rapid, intense connection with another human that I really admire. There's so much more I could say about Pansies and how it speaks to me, but ultimately, for me, this is a book that celebrates honoring your feelings and where they lead you, no matter what you and others think you "should" do otherwise.

I should add, for those who have read a prior edition and are on the fence about getting the rerelease version, that the author annotations are a fantastic addition. They provide so much insight into the South Shields setting and scene work. They're worth their weight in gold, in my opinion.

So I was lucky enough to get an advance reader copy of this book—thanks Netgalley and Sourcebook Casablanca.
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It seems a little odd to be reviewing a book I first read five or six years ago, and have re-read more than once since then. But it’s being re-released on Tuesday (5 November) with a sweet new cover. Also new are annotations from the author, which give a fascinating insight into all sorts of background details, from what he was aiming for when writing a particular scene, to details about a (real) restaurant the characters visit, to the etymology of particular dialect words and phrases.
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It’s safe to say I’ve never met an Alexis Hall novel I didn’t like. I love this one and have read it several times, each time picking up on something that has a stronger resonance for me this time round. This book is basically the story of Alfie Bell, who returns to his home town of South Shields, having forged a successful career and made a lot of money, and, since living in a mileu that allows it to be thinkable, has realised that he’s gay. In South Shields he reconnects with Fen, the queer kid at their school. The book’s about a lot of things: bullying and its ramifications, Fen’s grieving for his mother, Alfie’s struggles with masculinity and queerness, life in a regional town, and finding home. And as always with Hall, it’s sexy, swooningly romantic and has its very funny moments.
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As I said, different aspects have resonated with me over the years. This time I found some of the most poignant and moving sections are when Alfie talks to his Dad, (“Dad, why does it matter that I’m gay?”) maybe because now I have fully adult children myself. Alfie Senior is gruff and far more comfortable discussing the transmission of a broken down van than expressing love for his son. Alfie is hurt by what he feels is his father’s lack of acceptance. But

…he sighed. “Ye’d understand, if ye had bairns of your own.”
“I might, someday.”
“Ye want ‘em happy. That’s all ye want.”
And that was when Alfie recognised what he was seeing, right there in front of him, etched into the lines surrounding that stern mouth, those deep-set eyes. It was sadness. His dad was…sad.
“Hang on”—he blinked back a damp burning in his eyes—you think being gay means I won’t be happy?”
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A gorgeous romance with substance, humour, and the best chips in South Shields.

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Thank you so much to Alexis Hall and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the ARC of the Pansies re-release!

Alfie and Fen meet for the first time at a bar in their hometown - except Fen remembers Alfie from school, back before the former bully had known he was gay and instead messed with Fen for being flamboyant. Now that he's learned more about himself, Alfie is determined to repair Fen's view of him in order to win his heart... but love is complicated, and Fen has more to work through than what another boy from his town put him through.

Pansies is my introduction to Alexis Hall's writing style, and considering I (intentionally) didn't look too closely at the plot summary, this was the most delightful surprise of a book I could have asked for. Alfie is raw and real and full of internalized homophobia in a way that doesn't really get voiced in most novels. I'm so grateful to get to watch a character like him learn, grow, and come out the other side a better person.

On the flip side we have Fen, who is dealing with a deeply complex form of grief that not many people can relate to. I loved watching how his guard would pop up and fall away so openly, demonstrating how authentic and unfiltered he is. Together, their dynamic is electric and so beautiful.

In other notes, this is definitely a pretty spice heavy book, though there was a lot of purpose behind most of the scenes. I'll also mention that the bonus content in this book contains annotations from across the novel. LOVED reading through these and seeing the amount of depth Alexis has coating the backgrounds of every character that wasn't lost in the context of the story.

Overall loved it! I can't wait to read the rest of the Spires series and I'm sure I'll dive into the rest of Alexis Hall's work soon. Thank you again for the ARC!

I love Alexis Hall, and how they have a particular way with contemporary romance that is so intense but also cute at the same time. I've read a few of the Spires books that are being republished and the vibes are a little different (less cute, more kink), but still you can see similar thematic threads. In particularly the complexity of relationships and emotional connection beyond inital attraction and even just enjoying each others company. When you read an Alexis Hall book you really feel a hell of a lot.
One of the main things I liked about Pansies, was the thread about Fen's grief, and working out how to move forward form it, as well as the complexities of figuring out how life might look different to how he had previously wanted it. I thought there was a lot of nuance and compassion in the story, expecially on trying to navigate protective boundaries but also being open to people changing.
I also like how it was set outside of London, which often only ahppens in books if they're in a quaint village or something, so I appreciated the opportunitiy to experience place somewhere different.

Although I enjoyed Waiting for the Flood, Chasing the Light, and For Real, I struggled to read this book. I kept dipping in and out, but neither the story nor the characters hooked me, I’m afraid. I’ll probably give it another go in a few months and update my review then.

I received an advance copy via NetGalley.

I absolutely loved this book. Alexis Hall has a gift for infusing his characters with so much charisma that it is easy to forget that they are fictional characters. Alfie Bell & Fen O'Donaghue are both very charming & deeply flawed people with a very complicated history who somehow manage to find their way to each other. The humor is tinged with sadness but the story is all the better for it. I was so enthralled with their dynamic that when I finished reading this book, I started reading it again.

Hall has an incredible talent for writing romances that are thoroughly ground in the people and the place. I love the way that his characters communicate openly and are fully-rounded humans whose emotions run the full gamut. Pansies is very much Hall at his very peak skill as we follow Alfie and Fen as they come to terms with the complexities of their blossoming relationship alongside complex feelings about the place where they grew up.

As someone who was born, and lived in for a few years, the North East of England, this book felt such a deep feeling of home for me. I also recognise the complicated feelings that arise around the area as it can be so glaring at times that it can feel like a place frozen in a time when things were more prosperous. But it is never not going to be home. Hall does a fantastic job of incorporating-in dialect and speech patterns so that the reader feels firmly seated in the setting of the story and can understand the people that surround our main characters.

As Hall acknowledges in his introduction to this revised edition, this is a very ambitious story with some thorny and emotional issues being confronted, however he handles them with an incredible level of skill and compassion. There is never a feeling that there are necessarily right and wrong answers and space is being held where characters can confront a sense of dissonance about their feelings and opinions.

At its heart, this book is a romance between two men and it is so beautiful and so very swoony.

Alexis Hall is very firmly a favourite author for me and I don’t think I will ever tire of the brilliance he brings to the genre. I don’t think I can recommend strongly enough this book to readers and am very excited to read more from the Spires series and Hall’s wider body of work in the future.

"It’s like…pattern recognition, you know? How else do you figure out how the world works, or what a relationship is, or anything, except by looking at what’s already there? You don’t have to do the same things, but you have to start somewhere.”
“Things aren’t their outward signs, Alfie."
welcome to the Alexis Hall School of Semiotics

I’ve read Pansies three, maybe four, times, including this latest arc read (thanks to NetGalley, etc. etc.), and I’m continuously grateful for Hall's thoughtful fiction that always, always meets me where I’m at. always helps me through something. always cheers me and tugs at my emotions. after all this time, Pansies still got me in new, wonderful ways. some of this is reading at a very different time in my life, and some of it is the lovely annotations, for which I am grateful.

on the surface, reduced to tropes, I shouldn't like this book. a bully turned capitalist returns home and tries to woo the person he harassed in secondary school. I don't like bullies, I don't like capitalism, and I’m not personally interested in emotional reparations via BAD CARS (jfc Alfie. the McLaren 650s was right there. getting the Sagaris is so toxically masculine. I can't with you right now.)

but Pansies is the grief and its resonances, and the manly man coming to terms with failing at genderTM. it's healing-inner-child talks about musicals at the high school make-out spot. it's northern, and it's becoming yourself despite every social obstacle—however oblivious or well-intentioned—standing in the way.

sometimes, queer people talk about queer timeTM, how milestones can be experienced asynchronously. queer temporality changes the logistics of how we socially construct time, and I’d argue that queer temporality develops in opposition to all the normativities that dictate societal temporality. existing--and *believing you can exist*--outside paradigmatic markers of Life and Experience is a weird little bonus you get when you realize that, somehow despite everything in your way and everything funneling you to a certain way of being, you're queer anyway.

Alfie Bell, 30-year-old, is having a bildungsroman.

and I am so, so here for it.

in heteronormative temporality, there's this emphasis on longevity that manifests in wondering about your legacy (i.e. marriage, 2.5 kids, inheritance), but queerness (sometimes, I’m not a prescriptivist) is about the potentiality of life unscripted by such conventions. Alfie is struggling to come into queer adulthood because he never had a queer adolescence. he's a bit out of time in his way.

and then he re-meets Fen, marooned in his own past by grief, and Pansies becomes this impossible and beautiful reclaiming of time and queerness and a whole self. seeing each other through high windows and creating their own timeline together is one of the more validating queer things I’ve taken from an Alexis Hall book. it's taking a homemade lasagna via stupid boy car to your boyfriend’s flat. it's leaving your flower shop—your inheritance—in someone else’s hands while you Have Dreams. it's ice cream by the sea and challenging your parents’ notions of who you’re meant to be.

Finding this difficult to rate tbh, whilst I like the writing style I struggled to connect with the Alfie and Fen & their issues. I really tried but dnf’d at 66%.
Thank you NetGalley, Alexis Hall and Sourcebooks Casablanca for this ARC, all opinions expressed are my own.

When I was at school I was bullied. I sometimes wondered why the bullies were mean but I also get peer pressure and wanting to be in with your friends. I never went back or felt any need to build bridges with them but so many What Ifs?

Alfie Bell was a bully at school, maybe not to everyone but to that one queer kid. Now he's back home and having to deal with those memories as a gay man who's just come out to his North England family. Ouch.

And that bullied queer kid? Fen is spiky, beautiful, talented, underrated and utterly adorable.

I wasn't sure if I could cope with the flashbacks to some inexcusable behaviour but I guess I can as I ended up loving this book, and even getting fond of big hunkish Alfie and his clumsy attempts to fix things. The touches of Geordie slang and ordinary lives, and where ya get the best chips all rang true too. Big cities aren't everyone's cuppa tea.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Alfie, a 30y.o. investment banker is returning to his hometown of South Shields, coastal England, for his best friend's wedding. After awkwardly coming out to all and sundry at the wedding, he slinks off for a drink. There he sets eyes on another young man – Fen. They have a brief hook-up, but it seems they have more history than Alfie first realised that may get in the way of the future that he finds he wants.

There is a lot explored in this modern gay romance: Alfie, who is so internally contradictory, his late coming-out leaving him learning the terms of engagement ever so haphazardly. There is Fen's grief for his mother, and how he holds on to her memory. And let’s not ignore the elephant in the room – the fact that Alfie bullied Fen back at school. This last one puts them through the wringer time and time again; how can Alfie atone for his past bad behaviour? How can Fen come to trust Alfie? There is also examination of different forms of homophobia: internal, parental, societal; never really resolving them (are they ever?) but showing how one can still move on with life, ways of coping, ways of processing, and developing a good dose of self-acceptance. There are hard choices and many mistakes made along the way.

All up, Alexis Hall once again delivers an updated gloss on his original story, keeping their strong and wacky characters, putting them through all manner antics and hardships, and bringing them together in a way that we can all see clearer and feel a bit brighter, deeper, and lets the love of the characters shine off the pages. As always, this update contains some extra bonuses including his ever-enthralling Authors Annotations. Altogether it presents a wonderful package, relevant as much today as it was when first published. You might even have a new favourite flower.

I've been putting off reading pansies de for a long time and I'm wondering why.
An important element in this book is grief and how it can be all-consuming. I lost my mother myself and I didn't know if I could read this book.
I'm so glad I did. Alexia Hall has portrayed Fen so beautifully. He is a complicated character that you can easily encounter in real life. The grief is depicted so well. It is always there, but slowly there is room to live again.
And then Alfie. How he is struggling with himself. He wants so badly to be everything for Fen, but his upbringing is getting in the way.
Fortunately, Alfie and Fen give each other space to make (very stupid) mistakes and get their hea.

This is my honest review. Thank you netgalley for making this bow available.

Pansies by Alexis Hall is a heartfelt, emotional journey that blends romance, humor, and personal growth in a way that's utterly captivating.

What makes Pansies special is how it tackles the themes of redemption and self-acceptance with such a genuine touch. Alfie and Fen have to overcome their past, and Hall handles it expertly.

Pansies is being rereleased with a few changes and bonus material. It is the story of Alfie and Fen. They went to school together and Alfie was pretty much the bane of Fen's existence. He and his buddies terrorized the "pansy" boy relentlessly.  Years have passed and we know now that Alfie is out as a gay man himself. He's back in South Shields as a very successful, rich, investment banker to be the best man at his best friend's wedding. After a cringy "Ellen at the airport" situation where he sort of made a public "announcement", he flees the wedding reception to a bar and has a one night stand with an absolutely mesmerizing man... and this man is Fen.

I was hesitant to go into this one because I usually don't enjoy "bully-turned-into-lover" romance  but I trust Alexis Hall and he didn't disappoint. This book is not for everyone, though,  for   other reasons - it's slow. Not many things actually happen. It mostly revolves around conversations and figuring out things about themselves and about life. 

It's also not about "awakening" - they pretty much know who or what they are, but there is a lot of struggle on Alfie's side on dealing with internalized homophobia and how he's "supposed to behave". 

I loved their romance but the dreaded third act conflict resorts to one of things in a romance I really can't stand. I get that it fits the narrative and ties the story arc of Alfie not being the teenage bully anymore, but I found it really frustrating. 

I also adored Gothshelley and all the secondary characters. Sweet and poignant story.

As bonus material, there is a lasagne recipe and some very interesting annotations by the author in the new version. There has been no change to the previously released audiobook.

Content notes: (from author's website)  past bullying (one character bullied the other when they were children), internalized homophobia and internalized toxic masculinity (challenged on page), parent with Alzheimer’s, death of a parent (happens in the past and off page), grieving, euthanasia (happens in the past and off page), homophobic language, homophobia, mild violence

Of all the Spires books, this is the one I knew the least about going in. I don’t think I even read the blurb before going in, so everything was a glorious surprise from start to finish.

First, the setting. The North East had a special place in my heart, so it’s always nice to read a book set there – and one that recreates it so authentically, from syntax to culture. I really resonated with the complex relationships both characters had with their home town, and it was a really nice and unique dimension to add to the story, one which showed Alexis Hall at his best.

As for the romance: I really don’t like the bully-falls-for-the-kid-he-bullies trope. It’s one of my least favourites, and I generally consider it to be irredeemable. However, when I realised that’s what Hall was doing here, I immediately knew I was in safe hands. The storyline was handled with all the nuance and messiness it needed in order to work. Did I find it implausible that Fen had a crush on his school bully while he was still at school? Sure. But that aside, I thought it was brilliantly executed.

There’s a wonderfully vivid cast of characters (Gothshelley will forever be an icon) who really represent the best (and worst) of the North-South divide. That being said, there is – as always – room for nuance, and some of the side characters prove themselves in unexpected ways. As foil to the main characters, they allow Alfie room to explore and deconstruct his ideas of masculinity, sexuality, and to truly grow past who he was as a teenager.

I really really loved this book, and I’m so happy to got the chance and the excuse to read it for it’s re-release.

I received a free copy for an honest review.

I’m always drawn in by Alexis Hall’s writing, but the Spires novels cover some especially heavy topics.

The internalized homophobia, misogyny, homophobia from family and small-town residents, and grief depicted here as well as Alfie’s past treatment of Fen make this Hall novel not an easy read.

I’m glad I read it, but it did make my heart hurt for Alfie and Fen along the way.

These are important topics to address, just be aware that this is tonally different from Boyfriend Material, 10 Things That Never Happened, and the Winner Bakes All series.

Note: The Spires novels also have a lot more on-page intimacy than those books.

This can be read as a standalone.

The updated version includes annotations made by the author.

I received an advance copy from Sourcebooks Casablanca. All review opinions are my own.

This is a lovely addition to the series and like the rest, is more than meets the eye. There is the bully romance element, but also explorations of grief, internalized homophobia, stereotypes of what makes a man, and some funny parts. The main characters are realistically flawed but also interesting and likeable, and there are some good side characters (Alfie's exes and BFFs, Fen's dad). The setting is a big part of the story (like the other books in the series) and you feel like you get to know it a bit as the story progresses.

I've really enjoyed the series and the annotations and extra content in theses editions is a nice bonus!

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the eARC.

For the record, I will never not love an Alexis Hall book. No matter the genre or the genders. If he writes it, I'm going to read it. So, yes, I was very excited to read an eARC of Pansies, especially because I loved For Real and Glitterland, other books in this Spires series.

And Pansies had all the things I enjoyed about those books: quirky Britishisms, snarky banter, hilarious almost slapstick comedic moments.

And like with those other books, there was unexpected depth to Pansies. Poor Fen's heartbreak was palpable and Alfie's internal battles about who he was and where he had come from were very relatable.

I also want to give a special mention to the Prologue which was one of the loveliest openings to a book I've ever read.