Snow Boys
£3.80
Dean O’Donnell is a wallflower with a secret and a voice that could steal the show. Preferring to blend into the background at his high school, his world tilts on its axis when he is chosen for a major solo in the upcoming Christmas choir performance. His quiet life is further disturbed when he receives a Secret Santa gift, and an unexpected friendship forms.
Ben Hunter is the boy next door, well-liked but lonely. He wrestles with unspoken feelings for Dean and a family crisis that’s tearing him apart. When he takes a job at the local cinema to help his family out of a desperate situation, his academic life begins to crumble under the strain. But that’s the least of his worries.
As the holiday season unfolds, so do their feelings for each other. But with Dean’s anxiety escalating, and Ben’s life turning more chaotic, their differences seem more apparent than ever. Can they navigate their personal challenges and embrace the feelings growing between them? Or will this winter be the season of missed chances and what-ifs?
Read more
Additional information
| Publisher | SD Press (10 Oct. 2023) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| File size | 1281 KB |
| Simultaneous device usage | Unlimited |
| Text-to-Speech | Enabled |
| Screen Reader | Supported |
| Enhanced typesetting | Enabled |
| X-Ray | Not Enabled |
| Word Wise | Not Enabled |
| Sticky notes | On Kindle Scribe |
| Print length | 410 pages |
| Page numbers source ISBN | 1916383866 |
by Mike
What happens next? I want to see Ben and Dean’s story continue, incredibly heartwarming book that shows the difficulties of coming out in the 21st century and the struggles that people face
by KD
Easily the cutest romance Ive read all year with rich characters, really evocative writing, and a gripping story of what its like to be young, in love, and how to tackle coming out.
by AC/DC
Snow Boys
It was a delight to find another book by Simon Doyle. As I wrote in my review of Runaway Skies I find his work really readable, and I feel well held by his confident technique.
But now I have to eat my words from that review. Doyle has proved my reservations over the alternate chapter p.o.v. (which I have come to dread as soon as I see the Contents page) to be completely misplaced. Alternating Ben and Dean as the storyteller in this book works wonderfully. With only (from memory) one overlap in the time sequence, which is completely acceptable, there is no disruption to the flow of the story. But most importantly, Doyle has found in himself two contrasting voices. Dean comes over as lively, imaginative, inventive, and full of amusing metaphors. ‘You could have mistaken me for a skinned squirrel.’ ‘Ben looked over his shoulder and gave me a smile that was as uneven as his tie.’
Ben, by contrast, uses language differently, and his sentences are short. He talks facts. His acute observation is rooted in the concrete. His depressed state of mind and enforced struggle with survival are visible on the page. More subtle than that, following a meeting with Dean, Ben’s language lifts as he becomes infected with Dean’s playfulness. By the end of the book there is little difference between the two.
Characters are perceptively and believably drawn. Ben and Dean have different sides to them that complement each other, and power the plot ahead as each meets challenges in their lives. The parents work convincingly: Dean’s mother omnipresent, supportive and amusing; his father a background figure, but equally supportive, while Ben’s disastrous home life is crowded with the intrusively hostile couple who create a suffocating and constant uncertainty which Ben suffers heroically. Teachers are real people forming a school that does its best to support, while reflecting something of the relatively old-fashioned Irish fear of homosexuality.
And Ireland. ‘Mum used to say, “It only raind twice this week. First for three days, then for four days.” ‘ Very Irish! There is a strong sense of place that pervades the novel: the lowering clouds, and the snow that is the seed-bed for the plot.
There are the beginnings of a new plot device: a sub-theme of the school reading of The Lord of the Flies. The story of the children who become self-destructive and savage in the absence of civilisation provides a commentary on Ben’s parents, themselves immature and helplessly possessed by destructiveness. As Ben’s ability to look at his situation rather than just be in it grows, it is mirrored in the study of Golding’s work. Doyle’s use of this sub-theme feels a little tentative at the moment.
While the trope of the strangers to lovers may not be original, the most important thing is how it is worked out in this novel. I have to say it has been a pleasure to get caught up in the tensions and surprises of the way Simon has crafted this new work of his. Constantly amusing, he never tries to be funny. Even though sequels are a dangerous territory to venture into, it is significant that I have been left wanting to know how things turn out for his two characters.