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.

Whenever I'm having a book slump, I turn to Alexis Hall to get me out of it. The dialogue is always witty with well-established individual voices. A fun addition to the Spires-verse.

I am happy to continue the Spires series this month with Pansies! This is another book I would not have read had it not been written by Alexis Hall. I typically would never pick up a bully romance, but I didn’t really mind it to be honest. Maybe it’s a remnant of spending so many years in the church, but I really love reading about radical forgiveness. (Please note that I do not believe that victims owe their abusers forgiveness.) I do wish that the process of Fen’s forgiveness was more gradual. It felt a bit abrupt. The ending too was very abrupt, which I know is kind of an Alexis Hall staple, but it hasn’t really bothered me in any of their books other than Husband Material and now Pansies.

I really liked Alfie’s journey grappling with his masculinity and its relationship with his queerness, especially in comparison to Fen’s flamboyance. Coming out doesn’t immediately dissolve you of all your preconceptions of homosexuality, femininity, and masculinity. We still very much grew up and live in a very homophobic, cisphobic, misogynistic society, and this book did a great job showing that.

On a personal note, I really appreciated the personification of Alfie’s parents and their treatment of his homosexuality because they are so much like my own. In the author annotations, Chapter 16, note 5 reads:

“With Alfie’s parents, I didn’t want a situation where they were overtly rejecting him for being gay— more sort of implicitly rejecting him in ways they don’t fully understand, and he doesn’t know how to address, even though he’s trying here, bless his heart. I also wanted to look at the ways that parental rejection/queerphobia could coexist with a genuine conviction of love. Because I think Alfie’s parents really do love him, and I think Alfie believes that too; it’s just they’re also hurting him very deeply.”

Man this hit. My parents love me, they do, they said so when I came out (after my mom called it a choice and my dad made a joke about getting me shock therapy. 🥴) They don’t outright reject my queerness, but it visibly makes them uncomfortable. If I reference it they are quick to change the subject, and my dad specifically is still very queerphobic in his politics. I love them though. And I know I am much, much luckier than many others. But it still hurts, and I really appreciated Alexis Hall’s portrayal and description of that.

Pansies was all in all a really fun read. It’s Alexis Hall’s typical blend of absolute chaos and brilliant prose, and I’m really glad I read it.

This whole series by Alexis Hall has been really heavy but also lovely. Alexis never shies away from tackling tough topics but still giving every character the HEA they deserve. The nature of this series in particular does mean that I need to be in a certain mood to really enjoy the books. I have to be ready for heartbreak and angst. Unfortunately at the time I was reading this book, that's just not what I was in the mood for. And the tropes in this book are not exactly for me. I do also feel like there was a whole heck of a lot of unresolved internalized homophobia on Alfie's part. And while I think that is probably quite accurate - it was really difficult to read and feel that that was left unfinished in a way. I would have loved to see him actually go to therapy and work through (or at least start to) some of this.

I am most in love with Alexis Hall's work when there's a generous dash of his trademark Britishness mixed in, especially the Northern kind. There are a few of his books that give you an authentic feel of the English North - 10 things that never happened, for example, or - even more and abundantly so, Pansies.

I can't express how much I love Pansies. With its mixture of comedy, drama and deeply heartfelt romance it is a truly extraordinary book. Hall writes as if butterflies were painting an image on a window with their wings - his story is poetic, colourful, spot-on, and absolutely heart-wrenchingly tragic. And yet you will laugh out loud, cringe with second hand embarrassment, want to scream at Alfie (and at Fen, to be completely honest) and want to hug them at the same time. Mixed with the rough industrial feel that is inseparable from anything North, this book delivers one of the most delightful, funny, sad and improbable romances. And - and I am ready to die on this hill - it includes one of the most beautiful sentences ever written in English literature (no spoilers, but it is the one with a gym window, Alfie, and a butterfly).

This edition's greatest wow is Hall's annotations that provide - as always - his valuable and interesting insights, comments and explanations, delivered with his typical deadpan humour, which is very much my sort of cheese hedgehog canapé.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for this free advance review copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Alfie Bell wakes up the morning after an amazing hook up to discover the man of his dreams was the boy he and his friends picked on throughout their school days. Now the beautiful angry Fen wants nothing to do with him. Alfie desperately wants to make amends and prove he’s changed, but will Fen let him?

So I’ve read almost all of Alexis Hall’s work now, including the original version of Pansies both the ebook and audiobook (which I highly recommend). I didn’t notice off hand any changes here, apart from where Alexis pointed them out in the annotations. The annotations, which are brilliant by the way. It gave me so much more appreciation for this story, hence why I’ve upped the rating from 4 stars to 5 from my original Goodreads review.

I absolutely adore Alfie and Fen, they are both likeable characters with so much baggage that needs unwrapping, I truly appreciate how Alexis dealt with this, no knights in shining armour here! The secondary characters were well rounded and the connections to characters from Alexis’ other books were noted and appreciated. The other character in this story is South Shields, not a town I’ve ever visited but one I feel I know thanks to Pansies.

Final thoughts: A moving story of overcoming past hurts and finding love.

Who would enjoy this: Fans of contemporary romance, slight enemy to lovers and forgiveness trope.

Damn, Alexis Hall has done it again! There are only a handful of authors who never miss for me and Alexis is one of them! If you’ve enjoyed the other books in this series, I highly suggest checking this one out!! You won’t regret it!!

I finished Alexis Hall’s Pansies with a happy sigh and the biggest, sappiest smile on my face. I know several people who cite this as their favourite of Mr. Hall’s books, and now I can see why; it’s a funny, awkward, sexy, poignant and gorgeously romantic story featuring two wounded, lovely and lonely people that had me smiling one minute and tearing up the next – and sometimes both at once.

Alfie Bell left his home town of South Shields in the North East of England for a plum job in London, and now has a six-figure salary, a swanky penthouse apartment and the car of his dreams. He’s returned home for his best mate’s wedding, where he accidentally outs himself in quite the spectacular fashion at the reception. Deciding to make himself scarce for a bit, he drives to a local pub where he meets Fen, all lithe grace, pink-tipped hair and attitude … and is mesmerised. It’s not until after they’ve hooked up that Fen angrily tells Alfie that they went to school together, and not only that, Alfie bullied him and made his life a misery for years.

Alfie is horrified – not only because he didn’t recognise Fen, but at the thought of what he did – and tries to apologise, insisting he’s no longer that person – and is surprised and offended when a furious Fen refuses to accept his apology. Back in London the following week, Alfie can’t get Fen out of his mind, and, compelled to find a way to show Fen that he really has changed, heads back to South Shields. He doesn’t have the faintest idea of what he’s going to do or say – he just knows that he’s got to do something to make things right.

The story consists mainly of Fen and Alfie spending time together and talking, slowly learning things about themselves and each other, and exploring what they could be to each other and how that might possibly fit into the lives they’ve imagined for themselves. They’re both likeable, complex and relatable characters you can’t help but root for, and I just loved listening in on their conversations as they speak about what happened between them all those years ago, open up about things they’ve never told anyone and begin to learn each other anew. Fen is a loving and accepting person, but he makes Alfie work for his forgiveness, bringing him to see and understand how badly he’d been hurt by what Alfie thought of as childish pranks, and Alfie gradually comes to admit – to himself and Fen – the reasons he’d been such a complete git all those years ago; how in looking at Fen, he’d seen someone with the courage to truly be himself and, lacking the confidence to do the same, had taken out his frustrations on Fen instead.

Both characters experience a fair amount of growth in this story, and I absolutely loved watching their relationship grow and change. Sometimes it was a case of one step forward, two steps back (Alfie does have a talent for putting his foot in his mouth!) but it was wonderful nonetheless to watch this unlikely couple coming to understand one another and fall in love.

Alfie is struggling to reconcile the traditional values he was brought up with – men are men, they marry women, have children and provide for them by working in a manly profession – with the realisation (or rather, a long-delayed admission), a couple of years earlier that he’s gay. He may now be living as an openly gay man, but he doesn’t think he knows how to actually be gay, so part of his journey is learning to accept that he can be whatever he wants to be and it will be okay.

I liked the way the author plays with stereotypes here. Alfie is good-looking and well-off, and could easily have been one of those commitment-phobic playboy types with a revolving bedroom door, but instead he’s sweet and kind and a bit clueless, worries about the etiquette of picking up a guy in a bar and admits upfront that he’s looking for more than just a good time in bed and wants a relationship. He’s crap at traditionally manly things like DIY – the scene where he’s wandering around B&Q (a large UK DIY chain) doing Approved Man Shopping, “buying multifinish plaster just like the rest of them” made me chuckle – but discovers he likes to cook, and he tries hard to do the right thing… even though he doesn’t always manage it.

He’s the PoV character, but Mr. Hall does a great job of showing us Fen through Alfie’s eyes so that he comes to life in wonderfully vivid detail. Fierce, sweet, sad and loving, he’s also struggling to come to terms with big changes in his life. His mother’s death hit him hard and he put his career on hold to come back to South Shields to try to save her beloved flower shop from going under. But although he knows flowers, they’re not his passion and he feels like he’s drowning, feeling guilty because part of him wants the shop to fail so he can leave it behind. He has to learn to let some of his pain and resentment go so he can move forward with his life.

Pansies is, quite simply, a beautiful love story about acceptance and forgiveness and having the strength to be whoever you want to be. It’s about grief and moving on, and about forever and finding home.

"And we could listen to musicals. And you could drive my car sometimes. And I could suck you off in the mornings and fall asleep next to you every night . . . And we could walk on the beach and maybe get a dog. I’d quite like a dog if you would. But not if you wouldn’t. Only let’s not get a cat because they’re snooty buggers. And maybe we could do this all the time . . . Cos . . . well . . . that’s what love means to me. But it doesn’t mean anything at all really, without you."

I loved Pansies and know I’ll be returning to it soon.