WL's Mainstream Gay Book Reviews - 7. The Husband Gambit by L.A. Witt

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/42610128-the-husband-gambit

A story about fake “paid-for” husbands becoming lovers, interesting idea. What if I add in that the setting is Los Angeles, the characters are in the film industry, and the stakes are basically electing a racist homophobe as the next Governor of California…Yes, this stuff is a Hollywood screenplay waiting to happen, especially with the recall election of current Governor Newsom underway in California. It should be a perfect story for me, but some elements were just off to me.

Hayden Somerset is a struggling Pizza delivery boy, who aspires to be an actor. He answers an online ad promising $1.2 million to marry someone for a year, no string attached. What’s the catch? The guy posting this ad is Jesse Ambrose, who is an award-winning makeup artist from a family well-known in the film industry, especially his father Isaac Ambrose, who can make or break anyone’s career in Hollywood with a few words. He is enormously wealthy due to his western film acting career in the past, his action movie co-production, and exclusive studio access rights. Isaac Ambrose is running for Governor of California under the image of a progressive Democrat, but secretly, he is a homophobe and later we will discover a secret racist, who disowned one of his children due to their relationship with an African American woman. Jesse needs to expose his father’s bigoted views to the public, before he becomes too powerful to stop.

If it isn’t clear, I love romantic comedies and political elements within stories add a unique spice. No matter if it’s the politics from the US, UK, Australia, or a far away planet of sludge creatures arguing about slime levels, there’s an exciting element when you add that in. The stakes are higher and the characters are bigger than life, which enhances a narrative in my view. Political themes can get a bit into soap opera level if the story is only touching on the topics with broad strokes, which I hate say this story did. The biggest draw for this story was the concept, the flaw was its two-dimensional characterization of the villain, Isaac Ambrose. I understand what the author was trying to do and the obvious parallels he was trying to draw between Isaac to Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Donald Trump, but there’s an issue. LA Witt’s central conflict of a bigoted Hollywood kingpin needed the various description about him to coalesce with more on-page actions. As a reader and amateur writer, I understand the concept of “less is more”, but at some point, minimalism is an excuse for poor character development, especially for a central villain. Was Isaac Ambrose developed enough to be what we are told second hand by his children and wife about his nature? Not even close, which is a shame considering this book is 417 pages long as a paperback and 10 hours long as audiobook. Seriously, the development of Hayden and Jesse was nice, but the story’s focus was their conflict with an antagonist, who barely showed up, instead we get his emissaries in the form of his wife and other children. We also got an extremely slow burn romance and a honeymoon cruise, where Hayden and Jesse end up having sex non-stop. Then, Hayden had regrets feeling like he was prostituting himself for money to Jesse after the sex, which covered several chapters toward the end of the novel that could have easily been used to develop the Ambrose interpersonal relationships and characters. By the point of the "honeymoon", I was ready for the characters to be in a relationship and the story's main plot concept to take center stage, but it didn't. To me, putting such questions in the latter part of the novel after such a revealing sexual experience just destroyed the narrative's structure.

The final showdown was well-executed and precisely how I'd expect the ending to be. However, the payoff did not match the journey of the characters, because the villain was just not fleshed out, except in second hand observation. A character with such an ego and controlling nature should not be simply written as a mustache twirling bigot; if LA Witt explored Isaac Ambrose's mindset and his interactions directly with others, readers would be more than satisfied to see his ending.

Yes, I did enjoy Hayden character, he was a fun gay guy to read about with a rich backstory. Being the gay twin brother of a bisexual former Olympic figure skater, Brian, who overshadowed him in their youth, it was easy to see why he was motivated to be the way he was. From reading other books, like Leta Blake’s Training Season, I have gained an appreciation for figure skaters as both athletes and competitive sport (which tragically has some homophobic undertones, especially in certain areas in Eastern Europe known for it), so I can imagine how costly the training and the time commitment was for his brother. His emotional issues and slow progression throughout the novel allowed me to forget that this was originally meant to be about Jesse’s family and character issue. I think the Somerset family with the positive spin of Hayden’s family dynamic and progression in his relationship with them, they saved the story from being too disjointed and Soap Opera-like.

Jesse’s character progression was much different than that of Hayden. I felt he was far more developed already in his storyline even before. There’s a maturity in the character that was good and despite his family soap opera like drama, he was a very steady character. I know not everyone will like this kind of character, but on reflection, I think it fits the plot. There was too much going in the background, but his simple narrative and straight-forward past love life issues were logical and simple compared to his family members. I did enjoy his observations about his family issues and the toxic nature of his family.

As to side characters, I hope fans of LA Witt do not take my criticism the wrong way, but her side characters fell flat for me. Just introducing characters, making them one note with conniving characterization, or comedic tones just didn’t work for me. Again, this was a long enough book to have all these characters fleshed out with side plots, journeys, and interesting relationships. Worse of these side characters, Caroline Ambrose, the mother of Jesse, who can be a reluctant advocate on some level towards her son, but at the same time, her marriage is with Isaac Ambrose is underdeveloped. LA Witt hints at issues and tensions, but she never delivered the coup de grace that would have elevated her side story. The best romance stories aren't just about main characters falling in love and being happy partners, but also the side characters, who create supporting narrative to make the story progress.

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5, it’s not a horrible story, just not one I liked much. It has a decent plot concept, social commentary briefly, and some good character moments, but I am afraid that the problem with the story was that it failed to deliver on its premise both in its broad strokes of ideas and lack of non-protagonist character development for the length. Conceptually, LA Witt did have a great idea, but she just didn't develop it fully with 10 hours of audio and 417 pages.

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