Review: Glitterland

Glitterland by Alexis Hall
Series: Glitterland (#1)
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 

The universe is a glitterball I hold in the palm of my hand.

Once the golden boy of the English literary scene, now a clinically depressed writer of pulp crime fiction, Ash Winters has given up on love, hope, happiness, and—most of all—himself. He lives his life between the cycles of his illness, haunted by the ghosts of other people’s expectations.

Then a chance encounter at a stag party throws him into the arms of Essex boy Darian Taylor, an aspiring model who lives in a world of hair gel, fake tans, and fashion shows. By his own admission, Darian isn’t the crispest lettuce in the fridge, but he cooks a mean cottage pie and makes Ash laugh, reminding him of what it’s like to step beyond the boundaries of anxiety.

But Ash has been living in his own shadow for so long that he can’t see past the glitter to the light. Can a man who doesn’t trust himself ever trust in happiness? And how can a man who doesn’t believe in happiness ever fight for his own?

I thought this book was going to make me cry the ugly, unrestrained tears of the blubberkin. I blame Julio’s review. For some reason, I associated the salty mushpuddle he turned me into with the book itself. This book didn’t make me cry. It made me laugh. Hard. It made with laugh with the kind of unrestrained mirth of the belligerently intoxicated.

Cackles. They came out of me. In public.

*hangs head in shame*

There are already a lot of beautiful, glowing reviews for this, so instead of adding my own lengthy breakdown of the gloriousness that is Glitterland I’ll tell you the one thing you really need to know:

It transcends the form.

This is one of the most incredible, and incredibly well written love stories that I’ve ever read, and if you take a gander at my shelves, you’ll see that I’ve read a lot of romance.