Boy Meets Boy Reviews: GIVEAWAY + Blog Tour: North Star Trilogy by Posy Roberts

GIVEAWAY + Blog Tour: North Star Trilogy by Posy Roberts

We're delighted to welcome Posy Roberts to the clubhouse today to help celebrate the release of her beloved North Star books in an anthology!

Seven years ago, I published the first chapter of my first story online. It ended up being a 300,000-word behemoth, and one of the main characters was bisexual. Three years ago, my North Star trilogy was published by Dreamspinner Press. Again, I wrote about a bisexual man, and in several other stories since, I've had bi characters. When some of my stories got the "I don't get why the character was written as bi when he was obviously gay" treatment, I rolled my eyes and moved on. Drama-Free Zone is posted above my lintel, so I never stepped into it.

Being a bisexual woman married to man, I'm not at all unfamiliar with bierasure, but comments like that make me even more determined to portray the complexities of bisexual characters and other people who don't easily fit into binary boxes.

In the first North Star book, Spark, Kevin moves to a new town just before his junior year in high school and he meets Hugo on the job. Kevin was sure he was straight, but then he finds himself crazily attracted to Hugo. Hugo is gay and open about that with Kevin nearly from the start, thereby creating the first safe space for Kevin to explore his sexuality. He has no idea he'll fall in love with Hugo. The only thing he's certain about at the time is that he cannot have his father find out about what he and Hugo have done.

Kevin ends up hiding behind a girlfriend. Is that ideal in a romance? Heck no. Does it create conflict? You betcha! I don't write idyllic worlds or perfect characters. I write reality and focus on genuine struggles imperfect people encounter when they find love. Relationships are messy and complicated, and the entire North Star trilogy is filled with complications that Hugo and Kevin have to navigate over the years. At first it's their own sexualities, how to tell their families or keep it hidden, and then it's to learn how to be great together. Sadly, college and adulthood interfere, and they end up drifting apart.

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Does Kevin go back to being straight after that? Nope. He finds himself attracted to other men, maybe never as strongly as Hugo, but in the interim years, he never once acts on that attraction. Instead, he does what his father expects of him: get married, focus on his career, and have kids. The marriage fails, but not because of his sexuality! It fails because he and his wife drift apart after the kids are born, like about every other couple who has kids. Some are able to hold on and come back together, but a huge number of marriages fail.

When Hugo and Kevin meet years later, there's no doubt that all those old feelings are still there. None whatsoever, but Kevin has never told anyone besides Hugo that he's bisexual. Now he's mid-thirties with kids and an ex? How on earth does he tell his kids this? Will his ex-wife contest their already established custody agreement because of what she will see as his newly defined sexuality?

Kevin's bisexuality is woven throughout this series and brings with it different complications at various stages in the book, from telling his ex and kids to coming out to his mother and his social circle. Much of the world is still quite naïve to what bisexuality means, so I'm glad I'm able to show some that in this trilogy.

Second chances at such perfect love don’t happen every day. Hugo and Kevin immediately know they’re meant to be, but figuring out a way to combine their divergent lives without rocking their well-established boats is the challenge. If that’s even possible. Perhaps their love is worth upending the worlds they know.

Falling in love again is easy. Fitting into each other’s complicated lives isn’t.

Hugo and Kevin were best friends and secret lovers in high school, but a chance meeting years later proves that the spark that drew them together before is still there. In Spark, Hugo and Kevin must try to put together a relationship while overcoming the obstacles of coming out, divorce, and children. In Fusion, an unexpected illness may tear apart all they’ve been building. And in Flare, though they’ve finally settled together happily, outside forces are working hard to upset their family.

Posy Roberts writes about the realistic struggles of men looking for love. Whether her characters are family men, drag queens, or lonely men searching for connections, they all find a home in her stories.

Posy is a Jill of all trades and master of the drill and paintbrush. She’s married to a partner who makes sure she doesn’t forget to eat or sleep during her writing frenzies. Her daughter, a budding author and cinematographer, helps her come up with character names. For fun, Posy enjoys crafting, geocaching, and singing spontaneously about the mundane, just to make regular life more interesting.