The Gay Best Friend is a fun story about coming into your own and stepping into your own light. It features some infidelity though, as well as two accidental outings, which may discomfit some readers.

Kate Wallace, Domenic Marino, and Patrick Cooper have been best friends for ages, and they’re always there to help one another with whatever life throws at them. In Domenic’s case, that currently involves a break-up with Ted, his former fiancé. In Kate and Patrick’s cases, it’s choosing between marrying or staying single. Kate and Patrick choose the former, and Domenic soon finds himself dealing with Patrick and Kate’s manic energy as they get engaged and start putting together their wedding. Dom finds himself playing co-best man, which means twice the duties and twice the wedding chaos. Even worse, Dom has learned to split his personality when with his friends – with Kate he plays into gay best friend stereotypes, and with Patrick he tends to behave in more traditionally masculine ways.

When Dom throws Patrick a bachelor party at a beach house,he’s under strict orders from Kate to keep an eye on things. Unfortunately, strippers, alcohol and whipped cream conspire to make a bleary night, as does Patrick’s choice to use his bachelor weekend as an excuse to cheat on Kate, leaving Dom with a whopper of a secret. Patrick also connects with an old college friend of Patrick’s, Bucky Graham, an ace golfer with the PGA. During the bachelor party Dom offers up some romantic advice to Bucky which results in him shattering his engagement, leaving his ex-fiancée enraged at Kate. Bucky also confides in Dom that he’s been suspended by the PGA, and before the end of the weekend Dom has seen Bucky naked. Soon he and Bucky are falling in love, which may be hazardous to Bucky’s career. Can Dom learn to be his true self, get Bucky to come out – and get Patrick and Kate to actually talk to each other like adults?

This is a quick read that’s charming in places and keeps you turning the pages. Kate and Patrick can be a little annoying, and poor, long-suffering Dom gets the brunt of it for a while, but they do manage to emerge as their best selves before the novel concludes. A lot of the story does get swallowed up by straight people drama though – Dom eventually realizes this and makes space for himself but it takes a while, and some readers may find his behavior trying.

There’s a lot of complicated stuff going on when it comes to Dom’s desire for Bucky to be out and Bucky’s desire to stay closeted. On one hand, Bucky’s got his career to think of, and on the other, denying repeatedly to others that he and Dom know one another is a little trying, to say the least. But Dom does out Bucky, so it’s not exactly the best situation for anyone. I did like Bucky’s southern charm, and the way it soothed Dom’s frazzled edges.

I’ve been to Mystic, Connecticut a million times and I was delighted when landmarks popped up in the book; the topography was quite familiar to me and DiDomizio handled it beautifully.

However, I found Kate and Patrick to be exhausting in their childish drama and resistance toward talking to each other like adults about their expectations. It absorbed so much of the book and I just wanted to stay in Dom’s headspace and get to know him better. They’re the reason why this book landed in the C zone. The Gay Best Friend is a lovely read when it’s focusing on Dom, Bucky, their relationship or Mystic itself – but how much you enjoy it will likely depend on how far you can stomach Kate and Patrick’s antics.