Something we reviewers often say is that the hardest books to review are the middling ones; the ones that aren’t terrible but aren’t great and are just kind of okay. Unfortunately, Jack Strange’s début, Look Up, Handsome, doesn’t quite get to ‘okay’ levels; it’s billed as a rom-com but is neither romantic nor funny, the characters are wooden and there’s a LOT of overblown introspection, which leads to an overall feeling that the author is telling the reader stuff rather than the story evolving organically through character action and interaction. Worse, it’s an over-idealised, Hallmark Christmas movie in book form, which is just not my thing.

Quinn Oxford runs Kings & Queens, the only LGBTQ+ bookshop in Hay-on-Wye (famous for its literary festivals and many bookshops) and for the last few months he’s been ignoring the letters telling him he’s going to be evicted just before Christmas. The restoration of the local castle is being undertaken by the building firm run by his mother’s new partner, Harold, who wants to convert the shop – which is housed in the site of the old chapel – into the castle’s ticket office and information centre. Quinn has told nobody about the letters and the coming eviction – even his mother is on Harold’s side – and he doesn’t know what to do. The shop is more than his livelihood; it’s a safe space for the area’s queer community, and Quinn hates the thought of losing his ability to be there for the people who need help selecting a book, a sympathetic ear, or just somewhere they can be themselves.

Best-selling romance author Noah Sage – on whom Quinn has something of a hopeless crush – is doing a book signing at the winter festival, but an accident with a glass of champagne sends Quinn running to find a clean pair of trousers and he almost misses it. He and and his friend, Ivy, are almost at the front of the queue, and Quinn is sure he’s caught Noah glancing at him, but Noah’s minders arrive to hustle him away to his next event so they never get to actually speak.

Quinn had thought Noah leaving the signing meant he was leaving Hay, but later that day, the pair run into each other again at the nearby cemetery, where Quinn has gone to visit his father’s grave. The next morning, they bump into each other again, this time outside the local coffee shop, and manage a slightly longer conversation during which Noah confesses to not wanting to be in Hay. Quinn is saddened by this; he can’t imagine living anywhere else and wonders why Noah feels that way.

But he doesn’t have time to moon over the handsome author. With some shoving from Ivy, Quinn decides it’s time to stop letting life happen to him and to step up and actually do something to try to save Kings & Queens. As word starts to get out – thanks to help from Noah and a friendly TV journalist – the battle to save the shop starts to gain momentum as townsfolk and visitors alike get behind the campaign, which eventually attracts national media attention. With just days to go before Christmas, will Quinn be able to save his shop?

There’s an interesting secondary plotline about Noah’s mother, Hermione, once a famous actress who is now something of a recluse and rarely leaves her home in the neighbouring village. Twenty years earlier, and with a couple of Oscars and a BAFTA to her name, she’d been all set for mainstream Hollywood success when a sex scandal tanked her career. I liked the way the story explores the costs of fame and the way we view celebrities – especially women – and I appreciated Hermonie regaining her voice and taking control of her narrative. I do think, however, that her hiding away for twenty years because she fears the locals are laughing at her, and thinking that the media is just waiting for her to show her face before pouncing on her to stir it all up again is a bit of a stretch. Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper and all that.

The romance between Quinn and Noah is pretty much non-existent. They have zero chemistry, I have no idea what they saw in each other, and they’re so bland and uninteresting that I didn’t care about either of them. There is no spark of sexual tension or attraction between them and the book’s single sex scene is all build up and no action. Write a sex scene or don’t – I get that not every author is comfortable writing them and that’s fine – but if you’re going to do it, then do it; don’t half-arse it.

Being in Quinn’s head the whole time means we have absolutely no concept of who Noah is as a person. All we know is that he left Hay at sixteen, hates coming back and has no intention of staying; and he’s a best-selling romance author who is gay, but doesn’t write queer romance. [I’m heading into spoiler territory here, but I think I have to mention that for over half the book, Quinn has no idea that Noah has come to Hay with his boyfriend, Matty – who is obviously a dick. Noah is not happy with him, but they’re still a couple when Noah is regularly flirting with Quinn, and they don’t break up until later in the book. (There’s no physical cheating though.) ]

Quinn is just as poorly characterised. He’s gay, he owns a bookshop, he’s got a crush on Noah, and he’s still struggling to process the death of his father, who was his friend and his biggest supporter. Quinn’s tendency to run from confrontation leads to his doing nothing about the potential loss of his livelihood until the very last minute – how on earth has this man managed to run a business for any length of time?

The secondary cast isn’t at all memorable, although perhaps Ivy deserves a mention for being the person who gives Quinn the necessary (and metaphorical) kick up the arse he needs to get moving on saving the shop.

A couple of things don’t add up. At one point, we’re told that Hermione is “old Hollywood” – which I think of as 1940s – but she’s not that old! And the scandal happened twenty years ago, but Noah is in his late twenties/early thirties, so he’s too old for that to be right. Then there’s the fact that Hermione’s autobiography is published just four months after it’s delivered. A showbiz autobiography in which she sets the record straight would surely have had to go through rounds and rounds of fact-checking by lawyers as well as all the usual editing processes, and I can’t believe that could happen in such a short space of time.

Oh, and surely, any romance author worth their salt setting a story around Christmas time knows mistletoe has white berries, not red ones.

This is the first novel I’ve read by Jack Strange, and I think it’ll be a while before I pick up another. Look Up, Handsome tips the scales at below ‘middling’ because the plot is trite, the characters are flat and two-dimensional, the romance is a non-starter and there’s nothing in the story that enabled me to connect emotionally or invest in it – I just didn’t care about the fate of the shop or the characters. This kind of twee, overly sentimental story just isn’t for me, and I freely admit that I considered DNF-ing several times and probably would have done so had I not committed to write a review. But I did (finish) and I have (written a review). My work here is done.