Best Men by Sidney Karger

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Best Men
by Sidney Karger
May 2, 2023 · Berkley LGBTQIARomance














I think it’s safe to say that I am not the target demographic for Best Men, a romantic comedy between two Gay men in New York City. I say this not because I am a woman, nor because I live in the suburbs of Sacramento instead of in an apartment in Manhattan. No readers, I say this because I am OLD and the lives of these characters, all of whom are in their early thirties, sound exhausting. And yet, I still found a certain fascination and amusement with this story. Despite near-constant irritation with the characters, I found myself eager to know what happens next.
Max has been Paige’s Gay Best Friend ever since he came out to her in high school. Now Paige is getting married, and she wants Max to be her best man, her “gay of honor” as she puts it. Paige thinks Max will get along great with her fiance’s brother, Chasten, who is also gay. Little does Paige know that Max and Chasten met one night at a bar and had a terrible hook up.
Anyway, Chasten asks Max not to tell Paige that they’ve met, and gradually Max starts to see Chasten less as a rival for Paige’s friendship and more as a potential friend. With Max still hung up on, and still having regular sex with, an evil ex-boyfriend, and Chasten possibly seeing someone else, romance is off the table even though the two are forced to work together on what Max refers to as “this wedding stuff.” But this is a romance novel, so no, romance isn’t off the table at all.
Max is our narrator and protagonist. Max literally describes himself as being not like other gays:
I’m reminded of how being gay is not really my forte. Oh, I like guys that way , but I’m really not the kind of gay you’re expecting. Anyone who knows me will agree that I’m not a professional gay and should have my gay card taken away by the gay police. I love morose eighties college rock and hate Britney Spears. I use my Brooklyn Botanic Garden membership more than my gym membership. I’ve seen half an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race …sometimes I think I’m still single because other gays don’t know what kind of gay I am.
OK, then. Max is in his mid-thirties, works for HR in an advertising firm, and is still hooking up with his ex. They were together for years before breaking up and now Max is having brief, casual encounters with Greg while Greg is playing the field. Greg is awful, we hate him. Max has been friends with Paige since childhood. They moved to NYC together, live near each other, and have “splunch” every Sunday (they are too cool to use the word ‘brunch’ apparently).
I actually have quite a bit in common with Max. Unfortunately, what we share are the traits I consider to be my absolute worst. We are both judgey (I have strong feelings about how much people drink in the course of this novel), prone to jealousy, and possessive. I could relate to how much Max worries about being pushed to the edges of Paige’s life. I didn’t like it, and I thought he was pretty horrifyingly immature and narcissistic about handling it, but I could relate to it.
It was harder for me to relate to how unfailingly self-centered Max is. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been presented with a character for whom I’m supposed to feel sympathy who is this consistently self-involved. Max makes every single aspect of Paige’s wedding all about him. All of his suggestions are about their relationship, not the relationship Paige has with the actual groom. All his actions are dictated by how he thinks said actions will make HIM feel. The only time I could sympathize with him making everything about him was when Paige, who is always indecisive, reveals that she’s having second thoughts about the wedding, and Max is frustrated because she doesn’t recognize that even being able to consider getting legally married is a privilege still denied to gay couples all over the world.
Even when Max displays empathy, he does it badly, like when he has to fire a friend and he ends up crying and the fired employee has to comfort him. But Max isn’t the only person here who makes everything about him. For people who have talked or texted almost every day of their lives, Paige doesn’t strike me as supportive of Max. Paige almost never shows any concern or consideration for him. She just summons him when she wants him for wedding stuff (which, to be fair, is the Best Man’s JOB) and ignores him the rest of the time. In fairness, the toxic quality of this friendship is a key part of the book.
There’s some weird shit in this book, y’all. Maybe it’s a generation gap problem? I spent my thirties in a very different world, so who knows, maybe some of the things that struck me as odd are perfectly normal among urban thirty-somethings. For instance, Max seems to have no idea that being the Best Man/Person of Honor is a job with actual duties that you have to perform. He doesn’t seem to expect to have to do anything, and he resents Paige asking him to help with things, but he also resents it if she doesn’t because to Max that means that she’s excluding him and spending time with other friends. Meanwhile there’s never a clear conversation about what exactly Paige wants him to do or what he is willing to do. They just keep passive-aggressively hinting things at each other. This is my idea of communication hell.
But maybe it is I who doesn’t know what a Best Man does, because later Paige says it’s Max’s job to set up “little surprises throughout [the wedding]”, and Chasten acts as though yes, this is a given. Is this a new thing, or was it always a thing but I didn’t know about it? At any rate, Max and Paige only really communicate when they are fighting and they aren’t even great at it then, which I found to be maddening. They talk to each other in passive aggressive texts and in alcohol soaked bursts of mutual affection. This is not my jam.
Also:
Mild spoiler
Max’s company is in the middle of layoffs and it’s his job to deliver the bad news. Everytime Max fires someone, he ends up with their office plants. Eventually the plants become a rooftop garden and by the end of the book he has his first commission as a landscape designer. Can you really become a landscape designer with no experience other than planning a garden day at a senior center and growing some office plants? Don’t you need vastly more experience? And a license? Is this another generational thing?

You’ll notice that I’ve barely even mentioned poor Chasten here. This is because I felt that the most important relationship is the one between Max and Paige. It’s also because while Chasten is likable, he doesn’t have a major character arc. Chasten is a sweet guy. He’s rich (due to having a wealthy family) and his career consists of making fine chocolates. One of my favorite passages in the book is when Chasten shows Max how the chocolate is made, a scene that shows that Chasten is creative, artistic, smart, and business savvy. Despite their horrible first hookup it’s apparent from quite early in the book that Chasten and Max will be very happy together once they get their other relationships with various friends and lovers sorted out.
As the book progresses, Max becomes increasingly angry about his “gay best friend” status and he is forced to realize that he has allowed himself to be Paige’s sidekick instead of the hero of his own story. This may seem to contradict my assertion that Max only thinks about himself, but much of his self-obsession stems from deep insecurity. I felt that certain character growth developments were rushed but overall it was nice to see Max grow up a little.
I have to admit that the structure of the book, with its cliffhanger chapters and subplots, kept me reading. I stopped feeling like I had to finish every book I started a long time ago so that’s no small feat. I really wanted to know whether Max would be laid off and whether Paige would go through with the wedding, and whether, or, more accurately when, Chasten and Max would finally become a thing.
There’s a lot of humor in the book and a great peek into the lives of single, child-free, New York City Millennials who have no responsibilities outside of work and who have plenty of cash, time, and energy to burn. There are a lot of parties, there is karaoke, there is fine dining, and there is a LOT of alcohol. A fun thing about the novel is that the characters go to real places so you can go online and look up menus and decide what you would order. You know, if you are into that sort of thing. Which I am. I’ll be curious to see what other people think of this book, one which I persistently felt I just did not quite get.