Pansies

Spires Series, Book 4

By: Alexis Hall

Narrated by: Cornell Collins

Alfie Bell is . . . fine. He's got a six-figure salary, a penthouse in Canary Wharf, the car he swore he'd buy when he was 18, and a bunch of fancy London friends.

It's rough, though, going back to South Shields now that they all know he's a fully paid-up pansy. It's the last place he's expecting to pull. But Fen's gorgeous, with his pink-tipped hair and hipster glasses, full of the sort of courage Alfie's never had. It should be a one-night thing, but Alfie hasn't met anyone like Fen before.

Except he has. At school, when Alfie was everything he was supposed to be, and Fen was the stubborn little gay boy who wouldn't keep his head down. And now it's a proper mess: Fen might have slept with Alfie, but he'll probably never forgive him, and Fen's got all this other stuff going on anyway, with his mam and her flower shop and the life he left down south.

Alfie just wants to make it right. But how can he, when all they've got in common is the nowhere town they both ran away from.

Contains mature themes.

©2018 Alexis Hall (P)2020 Tantor

Poetry - and a lovely performance by C. Collins

Classic, classic Alexis Hall! All my favorite aspects of their writing come together in Pansies. I have been enjoying Hall's recent stuff as well, but I've been holding onto Pansies for the right moment, and I treasured it like a greedy child. Poetry!

I listened to the audio version, and Cornell Collins does a stunning job with these characters. Simply a beautiful performance.

… Alexis Hall, what a way to write…

I’ve become a fan of his stories, very simple story lines very relatable! Very enjoyable… and when I say simple I do not mean it in a bad way… rather the contrary… OMG! I think this one in particular might be in my top 5! Great job!

Lovely Intro to this Author

I think this is my first book by Hall, but I found it through the incredible narrator, Cornell Collins. this seems to be the only book he read by her, so I'll have to see how the others are.

That said, I really enjoyed the characters. Hall's prose and descriptions are beautiful, and it seems she did a lot of reasearch or knows the area of South Shields well.

I will relisten to this book for sure, and look forward to seeing if I enjoy Hall's other work as much, even without Collins's stellar talent.

great narration but hard to hear on the highway

I love every single queer book that MLD/Cornell Collins has narrated. especially this one but their is one big thing that made this hard to listen to. I like to listen in the car while driving and generally this involves highways. Every single MLD book is hard to hear while driving on the highway. My phone is turned all the way up and I have to turn up the stereo so loud it's uncomfortable. This isn't an issue with other books. It could be a sound mixing issue or my car who knows but it's frustrating

Voices

The only thing I didn’t like is I couldn’t always distinguish Alfie’s voice from Fen’s.