The Boys

by Leo Robson

'Summer days and new relationships are rendered with a grace that is lyrical at times but also ironic and comic, in a tone perfectly-pitched' Colm Tóibín
'Compelling, vibrant, and dazzling' Brandon Taylor, Booker shortlisted author of Real Life
'Very human, very real but also, fundamentally, extremely fun to read' Rebecca Watson, author of Little Scratch

A New Statesman 25 best books to read in 2025.

London, 2012. Johnny Voghel is stuck. He has a dead-end job at a small university and a wilting relationship and is grieving the death of his parents. When his half-brother Lawrence returns to the old family home from Chicago after a period of estrangement, Johnny decides to do everything he can to win back his affection. It's a quest he pursues with the help of Lawrence's childhood sweetheart and a pair of mysterious and seductive students adrift in the city during the height of Olympics fever.

A generational saga that takes place over a fortnight, and a comedy about confusion and loss, The Boys follows Johnny as he revisits old grievances, cultivates new friendships - and tries to take control of his fate.

Genres: Fiction

298 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 8, 2025

Reviews

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Boys by Leo Robson is a tale of siblings- Johnny Voghel and his half brother Lawrence- sibling love; sibling one upmanship ; sibling connections in all its forms.

Set against the backdrop of the 2012 London Olympics, Johnny's somewhat mundane life is altered by the sudden appearance of his estranged brother who has been living in the USA

This is the story of what happens over the following fortnight as they navigate the changes between them, growing older and recognising failures and successes in their lives.

With an eclectic bunch of characters, the story explores relationships and the dynamics between them.
The plot is curious- things happen but nothing that gripped

An honest perspective is that it wasn't easy to engage with the characters ( as an older reader) relationships were incredibly fluid and lacked real depth

The interplay between the brothers was the best part of the book.

This is probably a great read for Gen Z.

[I' · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a heavily character driven book in which I did not care at all about any of the characters. As in, I have just finished it, and I could not tell you how it begins. None of them seemed remarkable to me nor could they make me care about their lives.
It's gonna be a no for me.

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

i feel like the author was more focused on naming places in london than on a plot for the book

[Kirsty · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was such a nothing book.

All the characters are pretentious and unbearable, which i actually LOVE when they are written well, but they were all so uninteresting and shallow i just did not care. The premise was really interesting and sounded like something I’d love but none of the relationships were explored in any sort of meaningful way, I didnt understand what they were talking about, if they liked or hated one another, if they were passionate about literally anything etc.

the dialogue is acc crazy. Its clearly meant to come across as smart or intellectual, but no real human being communicates like the characters in this book do. drove me insane. I understand its an artist choice, and it CAN be done well, but this did not hit the mark.

I think Intermezzo by Sally Rooney is a perfect example of this type of book done well. Those brothers are pretentious, they speak oddly, they arent necessarily likable - but that story was still very enjoyable bc it had a clear meaning and theme

[Alistair Welch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feel as though I could spend a lot of time gathering my thoughts about this novel, but here’s a few immediate responses. For the first third it’s fair to say I wasn’t especially enjoying the read; I found the characters dull, the style deliberate and the whole project a bit self-indulgent. However, spending time with the voice of the narrator-protagonist Johnny and the flighty orbit of supporting characters I settled into a rhythm and - unexpectedly- was drawn into the world of the novel. Reviews will all mention the action being set against the background of the London 2012 Olympics, but the lionised opening ceremony and Super Saturday are but tangential noise: a big occasion glimpsed by its absence. Perhaps this is a cross-generational coming-of-age novel about hyper-educated, hyper-discourse-aware millennials & Gen-x cuspers performing and negotiating selves through long adolescence in the doubly-unreal city of Olympic London. Star rating pointless for this one; and there’s loads more to say, but I quite liked it.

[Yu-Yuk Cheung · Rating 1 out of 5]

I never write reviews but this book was truly terrible. I kept waiting for something to happen, nothing did.

[elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

hooray for random obscure library books!
while i found every one of the characters insufferable, i really enjoyed the vibes of this book and it was exactly what i needed during the part of my summer where i wasn't doing anything interesting

[Chrissy Francis-Gilbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

The hypnotic cover of Leo Robson's The Boys caught me on this one, as well as the relationship between brothers living on two sides of the Atlantic. The male protagonist is lonely, unmotivated, a little needy, kind, generous but stuck in a rut, living a life that's not yet removed from his old student days. Satirical and humorous since I read this novel as a presentation of the dangers of prolonging student lazy living, especially in a metropolitan city that doesn't help with low-key frugality.

I was intrigued to read from a male author offering a character-driven, seemingly very literary novel without a firm direction towards any particular genre. As in, this seems to be a perfect example of what Men's Fiction should be, if we compare with its equivalent Women's Fiction. The novel includes certain intricacies of young male lives, the relationship issues and concerns that crop up when characters meet old flames, friends, estranged siblings, family and haunts from the past. 
I loved the London setting and a lot of this novel reads as familiar to me, having grown up in Kent, very close to London and its environs. 

The opening of this novel is uninspiring though, which is a shame and unfortunately does set up much of the rest of the novel to be a slowly filtered collection of experiences, meetings and conversations.

As a literary fiction reader and knowing Leo Robson to have been one of the Booker Prize judges in 2018, the mundane and unexciting scenes made me suspicious for more! I read vibes of anarchy and the novel's style could be compared with that of The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton. Its underlying subtle social commentary on London living (and Londoners) was brilliant! 

This is a novel that possibly needs to be deconstructed to be fully appreciated and to some extent understood. Is it existentialist? Does its style include meta-fiction? Is London meant to be a sort of speculative fantasy world? I would even be as direct to say that it's a story that's written very much with cinematic TV episodic TV series sequencing and style, with an eye on a screenplay future? The characters are a great diverse selection of people who represent the nature of expatriate, privileged Londoners. 

The specificity of details and contextual references is not lost on me. I was born in 1980, spent my teens living in southeast England during the '90s and thus the fact the novel is set during the 2012 Olympics works well for me.

Many thanks to NetGalley and RiverRun and Hachette UK.

[Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t see why there is so much hype about this book. The writing is overall unclear, the characters are not very likable, and huge sections of the book seem to be a waste of time.

Some big detractors:
-Time will jump back and forth between paragraphs in a way that it’s unclear whether something is happening at the present time, or whether it happened years ago
-The narrator is a bit of a creep, in a way that isn’t exactly clear, but then suddenly ends up OK at the end?
-There is too much subtext in the conversations between the characters to the point that it either takes a long time to understand what is going on (for example, that Miriam is the narrator’s aunt), or that you never understand what is going on, in a way that does not add mystique but overall detracts from the narrative
-The narrator lacks authentic relationships with any of the other characters
-It seemed like it was supposed to be important that the story was set during the 2012 Olympics, but this was not actually significant to the plot in any way
-At least an entire third of the book is a literal waste of time as the narrator hangs out with two college students in a way that is a bit creepy as he has very unclear motivations

The only thing I can say that I like about this book is its attempt to be a book about brothers. It was also very “local,” with lots of specific places named.

[Haxxunne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A laconic, subtle comedy of manners
—
Set during the London Olympics, this is a laconic, subtle comedy of manners that, in 2025, is almost a historical document, when the world was more rosy-tinted and we could afford to be optimistic. Johnny is in a rut, trapped by grief and habit, until the human whirlwind that is his older half-brother Lawrence swans back into his life without a howdedo but with a new adult son expecting his own first child and other dramatic accoutrements in tow. As these two bat around their bit of London, their lives collide and intersect, and the drama is shown as nothing more than life, raw and uncertain and ungovernable. The characters are probably the best thing in this, their thoughts laid bare in conversation and speechifying, talking like Ivy League professors rather than street level humans. I really enjoyed this, knowing it wasn’t going anywhere but enjoying the scenery.

[Tag Bogo · Rating 3 out of 5]

There has been a real Buzz about this book . Positive Reviews in the Papers and TLS and must read books for the Summer, and some big guns are Quoted has loving this novel on the dust jacket , left me cold
The 3 out of 5 is due to the fact that could Not Relate to the Characters ,who all seemed to come from Central Casting , stereotypes bordering on Parody
Loulou and Jasper were laziest delineated characters , Rory , Kate , Chloe and Lawrence again Never come alive on the Page
I tried hard to relate or believe in these characters maybe I am the problem

[Tilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a strange book. Lots of dialogue reportage in an attempt to feel realistic but I don’t feel like it’s like any conversations I’ve ever really had.

Another example of the blurb being totally misleading and causing long term confusion, à la Good Material by Dolly Alderton. Apparently Jonny goes is on a mission to win over his brother, which just isn’t the storyline!

[A J HOOPER · Rating 2 out of 5]

Depressed and depressing story about two brothers. For reasons of family feeling , nostalgia and sheer sentimentality Johnny wants to be close to Frank who is 20 years older. I didn't continue listening because it was all so downbeat.

[Giren · Rating 4 out of 5]

languid, almost early Linklater film esque meandering through a variety of surprising characters (some work better than others) - probs not for everyone given lack of plot etc but I loved the London-ness of it all.

[Lily · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book started promisingly, then halfway through new characters were introduced and it was unclear why and who they were. Difficult-to-follow dialogue and the second half feeling like an entirely different novel led me to discontinue reading altogether!

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sort of confused three star review, more of a 2 star at the start, 4 star in the middle and an anticlimactic 2 star again at the end. A brief break between Booker shortlisters, and I will admit, picked off the shelf of a shop on Broadway Market purely for the cover design. It had real hope in the middle there, a complicated but compelling web of characters was spun, then just sort of faded out again as they fell out or drifted apart.

[Chelsea Mourning · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book had great reviews in the literary pages but was a real non event. I didn’t see the point at it but perhaps that was the point? None of the characters or their stories went anywhere. I am going to check the reviews that inspired me to read it as it’s a mystery to me.

[Hannah (the.baristas.books) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favourite book of the year

[Cordelia]

Read in a day, deliriously ripe

[Garry Nixon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable.

[Mary Dubberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few pages in, I thought, Nah. But his was the only book I had with me on a 10-hour flight. So I kept reading, and by the time I got to Dallas I’d finished it, and I was glad to have read it. Good on siblings, good on being a little weird, and on having siblings who are a little weird.