The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Dangerous Attraction (Soho Knights 2)
By Oliver Takely
Published by the author, 2024
Four stars

The second in the Soho Knights series, this book tracks the life of Langdon, one of the group of former college chums who cohabitate a glam Soho duplex flat in London. The common backstory is that each of these men has a troubled past, and they have become a found family of brothers.

In this chapter, Langdon is paired by fate (because we romantics believe in Fate) with Eric, the redhead little brother of the owner of Madame Hoes, a big gay bar that serves as a community center in Soho. Eric has his own troublesome backstory, which piggybacks onto the latest of Langdon’s misadventures in romance.

It’s a classic gay rom-com, but with a pretty significant streak of darkness, and several plot twists along the way the keep the reader guessing as Eric and Langdon try to sort out their feelings for each other and the trauma in their lives.

What makes this story work so nicely is the way both of these men are presented to us as complex, damaged, but ultimately worthy guys, both of whom deserve the love they so keenly desire. Oliver Takely presents this series as reflecting the real struggles that many gay men face in growing up, coming out, and finding happiness. It’s an interesting parallel from the growing body of gay men who are writing in this mode—a literary genre essentially created by straight women for other straight women. There’s an element of fantasy for both audiences, but in the case of Takely’s intended readers, it’s a personal connection to lived experience.

Takely, a Brit author, is not quite as smooth a writer as, say, Charlie Cochrane (who is one of those straight women I mentioned—and one of my favorite writers). Nonetheless, his stories are winning because he loves the guys he writes about, and makes us love them too.