After reading Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material and the subsequent Husband Material, I was excited to read whatever he wrote next. I found the “London Calling” series compelling because of the rich cast of queer characters and the realistic way the protagonist was developed. While 10 Things That Never Happened, the first book in Hall’s “Material World” series, was lighthearted and fun, it did not meet my expectations.
10 Things That Never Happened is told from the perspective of Sam, a manager at a bed and bath superstore who quite frankly is not all that good at his job. He prefers to prioritize people over profits, and this manifests itself in allowing his employees to skip work, ruin the merchandise, and not meet their sales goals. Early on in the book, Sam gets a call from his manager, Jonathan. Jonathan is unhappy with how Sam’s branch is doing, and requests that he come to London for a meeting.
At said meeting, Sam is argumentative and not working particularly hard to keep his job. Luckily for him, right as Jonathan Forest fires him, Sam falls back and hits his head. When we wakes up in the hospital with a concussion, Sam chooses to let Jonathan believe that he has Amnesia. Not the type of casual (realistic) amnesia where he forgot the hour or day before hitting his head, but a much deeper amnesia where he remembers absolutely nothing of his life up to that point.
This is, obviously, a ridiculous premise, and I think Hall struggled to ground the story amid such a far-fetched lie. Sam goes to live with Jonathan, and they slowly begin to fall for each other. Jonathan is initially portrayed as a prick who adores capitalism. He values his money and rich house over family and his employees. Jonathan never really changes, but his backstory is developed and it’s explained why he feels that way. For Sam’s part, Sam also changes to realize things he was doing wrong as a manager. Both of these things combined felt like a bit of a pro-capitalism storyline.
Jonathan awas individually well developed, which is something Hall is incredibly good at. The fact that I didn’t like him very much (due to the traits explained in the above paragraph) wouldn’t be enough to ruin the book for me. However, because of the amnesia plot, I never truly got invested in the relationship between Jonathan and Sam. I struggled to get through the fact that Sam remembered everything and Jonathan wasn’t aware of that. The whole thing felt contrived and uncomfortable. In fact, it nearly felt like the amnesia was an excuse to not tell us, the audience, about Sam’s family until the “big reveal” at the end.
That being said, there were some redeeming qualities of the book. Jonathan has an incredibly supportive family, and it was nice to see a story (especially one that’s based around the holidays!) where the family dynamic does not revolve around the character’s queerness. The support that came from them was genuinely heartwarming to read and made me happy.
In addition, Jonathan and Sam’s dynamic is probably appealing for people who are a fan of the enemies to lovers storyline. They are set up to hate each other, and then slowly end up changing their opinions. This is always fun to read, the problem here is just that my opinion about these men did not change.
All things considered, I’ll probably read the sequel, because I do think there is potential here, I just wish things had gone a different way.
Thank you to Libro.fm’s influencer program for providing me with an ALC of this book for review!
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