The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Stolen Dreams (Soho Knights 3)
By Oliver Takely
Published by author, 2025
4 stars

Although this entire series is unabashedly romantic fantasy, the author clearly feels connected to these books as expressing the experience of real gay men in real lives. It’s an endearing quality in Takely’s writing, and I totally sympathize with him. This book in particular, which focuses in on the story of Paolo Rojas, takes the reader to a dark place that is part of the reality for some young LGBTQ+ people, even today.

Among the five young men who live together in a massive Soho flat (owned by Gregory, who has made millions on a gay fitness app), Paolo has always been the mystery man. Even thought they all went through university together, these men have respected the privacy of each other’s pasts. Takely explores those stories in this series.

A successful masseur in a luxury spa in London, Paolo has never told his brothers about being forced into a conversion therapy camp when he was just eighteen. There he met a young American boy, Max Brady, also forced into the camp by his parents. The author begins with a harrowing description of their life in the camp—which is also the birth of their love story. Twelve years later, fate (or coincidence) brings them together.

Max is a successful lawyer in New York City, having cut himself off from his family entirely, and made his way through university and law school. A highly-publicized success lands him in an awkward professional situation, and he decides to accompany some of his close New York friends to London to visit mutual acquaintances. This opens the door to Takely’s latest story.

The most important aspect of all of these books is the unwavering support and love these five British men (and their American friends) show for each other. There is no judgment, no criticism, only affection and protection. Although he is universally agreed to be the most beautiful and fit of his flatmates, Paolo seems to be asexual to his brothers. His story is finally explained, even as his entire world is turned upside down.

There’s a great deal of family trauma here, a reminder that it is not only my generation who suffered to be ourselves in a hostile world. Takely makes sure that each of his brothers is a distinctive personality, all of them demonstrating different strengths and different damages.

Takely’s writing can be slightly helter-skelter at times, but the richness of his characters draw you back again and again. These are the friends we all wish we had.

The next book focuses, at last!, on Gregory, the nerdy millionaire who made a home for his accepting crew of college friends. I can’t wait!