“Con, you don’t need to give me presents.” I had to stop and take a deep breath because this situation was out of control, and I couldn’t just stand here in my flannelette bottoms and pretend my life was fine.
“Come on,” I said, taking the flowers from him. “In you come.”
I sounded like my granny, and not in a good way. Next, I’d be calling him poppet and force-feeding him stale sweets from the eighteenth century.
― Sophia Soames, White NoiseThis wasn’t what it looked like. I knew that.
And now he was staying over. In my bed.
With his obscene flowers and twatty smoothie and bloody macrobiotic cereal.
I secretly loved that he’d brought me gifts.
Like this was a date. This was not a date.
― Sophia Soames, White Noise
Connor Telford is famous. Like really famous. He plays a detective on a long-running crime series called White Noise. He’s loved by millions, has money, fame, is super fit, and he could not be more miserable. He lives in a mid-range hotel in a non-descript London suburb so he can make it to the set and be in the makeup chair by six am every morning. He memorizes his lines, jokes with the crew, devours SciFi series on his e-reader. If he has any energy left at the end of his day, he gets in a workout at the gym near his hotel. Despite his grueling work routine, his wonderful and patient co-star Caroline, and monthly visits to see his mother, as well as his gym routine, keeps him steady, or steady enough to survive his exhausting lifestyle.
Connor knows he should feel grateful, and he does. But nothing in his life feels real. He started acting as a teenager, and he never had any of the traditional teenage experiences. He’s never had any sort of relationship. Aside from a few members of the crew, he doesn’t have time for anything resembling a real, adult friendship either. Although he wants more from his life, his fear of the unknown is too strong for him to walk away from the show.
He’s deep in his thoughts at the gym one day when he meets Matt. They meet when Connor accidentally punches Matt, who was an inconveniently-placed obstacle while Connor was gesturing wildly while running lines on the neighboring treadmill.
Matt knows who Connor is but has never approached him. That would be creepy. When Connor decks him, Matt tries to brush it off. He’s sure that Connor knows Matt has been ogling him from afar. Connor, who is somewhat socially stunted, won’t let Matt say no to a dinner invitation.
Over the course of a few weeks, Matt and Connor are drawn into one another’s orbits until they finally realize that perhaps they are kind-of, sort-of dating.
I keep reading books from this author because I love her writing style. In the same way that Alexis Hall’s characters are flawed and ridiculous and real, Sophia Soames gives us characters that are flawed and damaged and scared and I want to know everything about them.
Compared to Taste and Skin and Bones, I give this book three stars. This is a very good book, but perhaps because the stakes for these characters were lower than those of Finn and Mark and Hugo and Ben, I didn’t fall head over heels in love with them the way I did for the characters in her London Love books.
Still, the dialogue is cracking and this was a wonderful, cozy, satisfying book to read over the weekend.