I needed to Lose You To Find Me!

So I read All That’s Left in the World by Erik J Brown, and it was one of my favourite books in the year that I read it. That was all of the persuading I needed to pick up the book I’m talking about today, Lose You to Find Me, also by Erik J Brown.

The blurb says that Tommy Dees dreams of being a chef. He’s been working as a waiter to get the experience he needs to attend one of the best culinary schools in the world. And all is going to plan. Until old crush Gabe shows up and Tommy is assigned to train him. Gabe, with the dimples and kind heart, who Tommy fell for at summer camp, age eleven, and then never saw again. Unfortunately, Gabe doesn’t remember Tommy at all. But old feelings resurface, distracting Tommy from all his plans. With the chef school application looming and Gabe on his mind, Tommy is determined to keep it all together – but what is love isn’t meant to follow a recipe?

Chapter one is actually split in two, with a prologue of how Tommy and Gabe were basically besties at summer camp, until Gabe disappeared one day and never came back. And then chapter one is Gabe magically reappearing at the retirement village Tommy works at, because he’s going to be shadowing Tommy. Tommy also ends up being given three tasks by his manager, Natalie, that he needs to complete so that she’ll write him a letter of recommendation to this prestigious culinary school. And finally, he tells his friend, Ava, about Gabe, but she doesn’t remember him.

I was very confused for a moment about the kind of place the retirement village was that Tommy worked at, especially since they had servers, and then there was also mention of how much money they paid to live there. It was very much the core of they paid so much money that they could legitimately afford to make ridiculous requests to the point that the servers, hosts, and kitchen people had this rule to never say no to what the residents asked. But when you end up learning this early on, you also get little drips and drops of the residents and how they were. But given that there is one of the resident who, on multiple occasions throughout the book, gave Tommy hundreds, if not into the thousands, of dollars throughout the book.

Something I was very much under the impression of, or assuming would have happened, was that despite all of the Gabe seemingly not remembering who Tommy was, he absolutely would have remembered, but there was something keeping him from saying that. I guessed that perhaps, even though Tommy liked Gabe, he didn’t know if Gabe liked him back, and that the same would be true for the reverse. I remember mentioning, during my Fake Dates and Mooncakes post, that I needed to not take romance books so seriously and start just taking them for what they were. So when the reveal happens that, obviously, they remember each other, I loved it. The whole set up was all just done in a way that I could see it in my head. Like, I’d fully made this image up of where the characters were, and I was watching it happen.

In lieu of not taking it too seriously, there were points in the book, specifically shortly after the two realise they know each other, that I’m going to spoil. But I say spoil like it’s not something that happens in the first third of the book. That is that is that Gabe has a boyfriend already. I love some cause for conflict. Like, it felt like some of the romance series I’ve watched. It was so fun. The girls? (me) They were screaming. Of course Gabe has a boyfriend, which then meant that Tommy couldn’t just get the boy without being an arse. But with the pacing of it, it was how in some books you get a big, singular, hit of conflict, but in this one it was smaller bits throughout. That was what made it feel like a romance series. I could see how this book would be going episode by episode if it was a TV show.

Tommy had hooked up with this guy, Brad, a few times before the events, and he sort of does once or twice throughout the book. But then you also get the hints that perhaps there’s something going on with Brad, even though he only popped up every now and again. Brad was also one of these in-the-closet-jock types, but I did wonder if that thing that was going on with Brad was him genuinely liking Tommy and wanting to be with him. And because I had that thought, I was almost rooting for them, especially since Gabe had a boyfriend. So, even though Gabe is the main love interest in the book, I did assume that there was more going on with Brad, especially since, like I said, he kept popping up. To me, it ended up very much like the episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race before the finale – the one where they do the “are you team whoever” and give the hashtags. For me it was very, “Are you #TeamGabe or are you #TeamBrad? Sound off in the comments and on Twitter.”

Now to stay on the Tommy train, homeboy’s brain has some crusty parts to it. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean it in the way of you really, like really, get to see how his brain works when he gets into an argument with his best friend. You get to see how he’s been acting the whole time throughout the book, and what all of his actions have been meaning to that point. And with that, because he is obviously the protagonist, and he was acting this certain way that he gets called out for, some of the side characters don’t show off everything, simply because Tommy isn’t seeing these other parts – not because the story isn’t about them – because, as he gets called out for, he’s a bit crusty.

In terms of side characters, outside of Gabe and Brad that I’ve mentioned already, the main ones are Ava, Tommy’s manager Natalie, and some of the residents of the retirement village. Ava is the one that’s the most prevalent. With Natalie being Tommy’s manager, she basically gets the manager edit. I know that’s an odd thing to say, but as someone who has worked in retail, and for the people in hospitality, there’s a specific way managers are. Like, you know bits about them, but not all that much (usually, unless you’re oddly close to them). Ava, bless her, she goes through it right from the off, and because she does, you do get to know her pretty well. Then other than her, the residents of the retirement village that repeatedly showed up were fun. The majority of the time, they were there for comedic relief, although you did get bits of sincerity mixed in there too.

As for the ending, being completely honest? This was the most satisfied I’ve been with an ending for a book in a good long while. Everything that happened made sense, and what ended up happening in the ending was more or less what I wanted to happen as well. So, I can’t really complain about anything, I really liked it.

Okay, bye!