Review - The Boyfriend Subscription by Steven Salvatore

Teddy has hit rock bottom. He moved to New York to be with the man he loved and became the city’s “Plant Daddy.” His vindictive now-ex-husband has taken all that away, including the plant shop he opened, leaving Teddy poor and with no choice to move back to New Orleans to live with his mom. He’s drowning his sorrows at a dive bar with his best friend Kit when a very handsome, clearly well-to-do man enters the bar and shows an obvious interest in Teddy. Cole grew up in a wealthy family, but he walked away when his father insisted he go into the family business after college. Instead, he moved to Los Angeles and created his own highly successful Internet business that works hard to legitimize sex work. Cole is back in New York wooing investors to help take his business to the next level, but it’s a lot of pressure. He just happened to find the dive bar while trying to decompress, and is attracted to Teddy. Cole doesn’t do relationships, but Teddy may fill a temporary need he has. What could go wrong?

“The Boyfriend Subscription” combines some classic romance elements - a big wealth gap, hurt from a failed past relations - with some starkly contemporary themes. Cole is not just the owner of a OnlyFans style website, he’s one of its most popular creators. His popularity stems in part from the ability to appear to have an intimate connection with his collaborators, but he steadfastly avoids actual relationships. The “fake boyfriend/girlfriend” setup is a popular trope, and this story uses it well.

I’ll be honest, this book didn’t grab me. It’s well written with well-defined characters and a plot that should have got me engrossed, but it didn’t. It’s one of those frustrating things I can’t put my finger on. I can say that, given the title and the cover art, I was expecting something with a little more humor. There are some humorous moments, but not as much as I was anticipating.

Teddy and Cole are interesting characters. Teddy is the more relatable of the two. He seems to be an average sort of man, and his reactions are quite natural. You may not make the same choices Teddy makes, but you can understand why he makes them. Cole is a bit more of a mystery. He relates much of his past over the course of the story, making his estrangement from his family very real. But, for me, it still didn’t explain all the choices he made since being cut off by his father.

At the end, it’s the loose ends that contribute to the rather unsatisfying nature of this book. Cole and Teddy are caught up in a web of deceit, and these aren’t tied up at the end. Contrary to the current trend, there’s no epilogue that tells us what happened to all the other characters and plot threads introduced.

“The Boyfriend Subscription” is available from Amazon (commissionable link).