I read The Problem with Perfect and here are my thoughts

So, this is one of those books that I had no idea it even existed until I saw it. It’s The Problem with Perfect by Philip William Stover, and I saw it when I got the Hayley Kiyoko book that I also recently read.

The blurb says that when LGBTQ style icon Chase Myles goes missing before the live Pride broadcast for his hit TV show, producer Ethan Wells’ career hangs in the balance. Ethan tracks down Chase’s estranged twin brother, Beau, to pass him off for Chase for a week – but finds a hairy, rugged mountain man, the complete opposite of his brother… Can Ethan transform Beau into Chase, fool his bosses and save his job? And when Beau turns out to be caring, romantic and everything that his twin is not, does he really want Chase back anyway?

I’ll be real, that concept from the blurb sounded absolutely insane, but somehow also very Hallmark. I don’t know what it was, I think the absolutely feral nature of reading this that convinced me to buy it. I will also say, I read this entire book over three days on a trip to London, so a lot of it was read on the tube, so my notes and thoughts may be a bit scattered.

The book opens with Ethan on set with Chase, who is immediately just an absolute nightmare to work with apparently. You know, I’m all for gay rights, and sometimes gay wrongs. But with how bad Chase was seemingly being, some gay wrongs aren’t okay. Chase compares himself to Ellen, and she was apparently a nightmare, so I guess it makes sense for him to be the same. Then in this nightmarish behaviour, he throws a tantrum and proceeds to leave set. Ethan does give us some background about where he and Chase both came from and how they’ve worked together to get as far as they have, and you see that Chase wasn’t always a monster actually, but originally just a clueless boy from Wisconsin. Also, in the tantrum Chase has, he is arguing with Ethan, and you see that Ethan doesn’t exactly always handle his stress well.

We hop over to the second chapter that’s basically Ethan worrying about Chase, and introducing the character of Uncle Clams who is basically the one who introduced Ethan to the queer world. We then find out that Chase ends up running away to go to this circuit party down in Miami because he is, as Ethan refers to him as, a “circuit queen”. Then it’s at Chase’s apartment that we learn he has a twin brother, Beau, and that’s where Ethan gets the idea to swap the two.

And in classic romance fashion, Beau is absolutely nothing like Chase. Where Chase is this nightmare of a person, Beau is basically a hermit in upstate New York, living in a yurt. Ethan does end up bringing him down to New York City with the promise that if he does the jobs that Chase was meant to be doing over the weekend, then he’ll pay him and take a chunk out of the debts that Beau is stuck with. Also, Beau thinks social media is stupid and didn’t realise that people don’t groom their southern regions – yes, I am trying to keep this as PG as possible. However, at the same time, there are bits of pop culture he seems to know throughout the book, so I don’t know how he wouldn’t know about personal maintenance.

Ethan comes off as a very high strung individual. I don’t know if that’s supposed to add to the Hallmark vibe, since Beau is very much the meditation and personal healing, spirituality, kind of person – very opposites attract core. It’s also very much the lead who only thinks about work and their career with the person who doesn’t care about that, and just wants to be happy. It was very that vibe between the two of them. I know it’s a trope, probably literally opposites attract, but it was clearly meant to be that Beau was there to bring Ethan back down to Earth. I also say that because as I read, I noticed that Ethan would often wear designer clothes, or mention when people were in designer, or had designer items. I did see some reviews online talking about how they struggled to relate to Ethan, but in a way I did. Not in the career driven bit, because I am not that, but in that being afraid to let go, and let go of control, because I’m a little similar in some ways.

To talk about Beau for a moment, there’s this bit where he is meant to be doing this, I believe it was a, TV spot where he’s talking about facial trainers, and the stuff that he’s saying just didn’t sound like something any human would say normally. He starts talking about unattainable beauty standards, which fair enough, he’s been living in a yurt in upstate New York, but the way his dialogue is written here (and then also I noticed it more towards the end as well), it read more like an essay than actual dialogue. And I think that might have been my biggest gripe with Beau, yes, he did have moments where he was funny and snarky, but so much more often than not, his dialogue, and the things he’d say to Ethan just felt like the perfect thing that needed to be said. He just conveniently always had the right thing to say. A lot of the time, and I don’t want this to sound mean, he just sounded a bit flat. Like, I wasn’t getting his personality as strongly as I wanted it, whereas with Ethan I did. Like I mentioned, Ethan was very high strung, career driven. He was like that because he thought he had to be for whatever reason. So, while Beau was nice, and he definitely did have a backstory, I just thought he could have been stronger, especially for a love interest.

What I’ll give this book is that it never felt like it took itself overly serious. It was always just what it was, and never really tried to do anything more. It was a solidly easy read. Even though there was conflict and drama, none of it felt like life threatening. There was Uncle Clams who towards the beginning of the book wasn’t doing too well and ended up in hospital, but I never felt like any of the character were in any real danger, which is something I really liked. I know that sounds a bit silly, but if I’m reading a Hallmark-esque romance, I don’t want danger, I want fluff, I want cliché, I want one singular big dick joke – and this book had those.

Overall, I liked this book. It delivered on what it said it would. The romance on its own was… fine. But then again, that’s how I could sum up the entire book: Fine. It did its job. There were bits I liked, bits I didn’t. Do I think I’ll be rushing back to it? Probably not, but it wasn’t offensive or anything. It was kind of just… there.

Okay, bye!