Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Peter Felton
If there was a meme for being a total cliché?

That would be me.

It wouldn’t even need a description, just a pathetic snapshot of me in my threadbare pyjamas, standing at my filthy kitchen table, staring into the wall like a loser.

Because that is exactly who I was. The middle-aged widower caught up in his very own hell of a midlife crisis. The guy who wasn’t over his dead wife. The single dad. Pathetic, Peter. Utterly pathetic.

The guy who thought… I didn’t know what I’d been thinking. Because if someone had told me that at forty-five, I’d willingly go on a reality-TV dating show?

Yeah. You get the picture. The memes were brutal. Every single one of them was bouncing around the internet like a contagious super virus. The internet was forever. And so was love.

It wasn’t who I was, this… this joke of a man I’d become. It never was, and now? Now I was standing here wondering how I would ever leave the house again.


Oliver Jacobs
When I was a kid, I thought I was invincible. Turns out…sometimes I was. Sometimes my confidence took me places, and anyway. When I fell? I got up. Made a plan, organised my options and ran with the obvious solution. I was good like that.

But I hadn’t counted on…this one plan going so very, very wrong. So terribly, awfully wrong.

Because my requests were simple and easy. Youngish, around my age. No facial hair. Nice. No kids, no baggage.

Also gay.

And then? They gifted me…Peter Fenton. Everything I hadn’t asked for. And now he is all I want.

So… should I save the date? Or just swallow down the fact that Oliver Jacobs…just made the biggest mistake of his life.

Save the Date is a standalone novel set in the Square Mile Rogues universe. Content warnings for death of a partner, violent grief and finding out that love…really matters.

 

Book Review

If you’ve always wanted to know what goes on behind the scenes of Reality TV, this is the book for you. It tells the story of two men—Peter, forty-five, and Oliver, in his thirties—who are candidates of an upcoming TV show called Save the Date. Yep, one of those where supposedly innocent, naïve people meet in a secluded environment, get to know the others, pick one amongst them, and decide they’ve met their Significant-Other-Till-Death-Do-Them-Part, drumroll, champagne, finale, cheers, thanks a lot, take a check, and go back to your previous anonymity. Or not. All of the interactions have of course been 100% improvised, natural, a perfect mirror of real life (that is, if you the viewer are dumb enough to buy it).

 

Well, in the case of ’Save the Date’, neither Peter nor Oliver should have applied. The show is based on a half-baked concept as well as badly organised in a frantic-manic way, the “masterminds” running it are borderline bonkers, and the other participants turn out to be no different. Plus, neither Peter nor Oliver need the limelight. The former is a successful kids’ dentist, the latter a successful Money Man working in the City of London. Why they thought a Reality TV show would be the ticket for a happier life remains a mystery (well, it is explained in the book, but still). Why they are forced to shack up together is another mystery and can only be understood when one remembers what “Clickbait” means. Because for the record, Peter is straight and has repeatedly said so during the interviews with the production staff. His beloved wife died ten years earlier, and he’d be still quietly mourning her if his two sons hadn’t deemed he should date again and enrolled him in this TV madness. On the other hand, Oliver has disclosed his gayness from the get-go and declared that the only thing that would turn him off was… old guys. Like, dudes Peter’s age.

 

If one knows Sophia Soames, one can already guess what she’ll do with this roughly sketched storyline. She throws the two main characters into a bowl called plot, covers it, gives it a good, energetic shake or two, takes off the lid, and observes the result in her inimitable fashion. Which means twists, turns, quid pro quos, banter, messes, funny dialogues, tender moments, more messes, sometimes outright chaos. And like a red ribbon, a life line, a magical thread some sort of inevitable, unexplainable, unavoidable attraction that draws these two men into each others arms—as friends in the beginning, as more than friends later on, as lovers in the end, as it should be (at least that’s what you as the reader think and feel a few chapters in). Just for fun, Sophia might have thrown in another romance, by the way, that she starts somewhat on the sly until you realize that yes, you’ve been reading not only two alternating points of view (Peter’s and Oliver’s) but also a third one, and that that third one was very touching as well…

 

I really liked the book but a sorry to say I’d have two minor quibbles. Whereas the rhetorical and immediately self-answered questions I’ve come to identify as essentially Sophia-Soamish always spice up the author’s recognizable style, they seemed to have got a bit out of hand in this story. Sometimes less is more, and that would very much be the case here. Every other sentence was written as a question, and that became a tad tiring after a while. The second thing is the age-thing. Yep. I’m well into my fifties and still feel young. Peter’s in his late forties, he feels like an antique, and more importantly is depicted as one. And that I not only didn’t like but also didn’t buy. I had no problem with Oliver’s initial rejection. In the gay universe a possible, even a likely attitude (ah, queens and agism!). But the thing about Peter’s age got old, after a while (pun intended). Guys, get over it!

 

Apart from those quibbles, I had a splendid time in Peter’s and Oliver’s (and the third main character’s) messy world. Because in the end, it was filled with sunshine, hope, and love, and that’s what I really needed.

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the author. This book has been purchased by the reviewer.

 

Additional Information

Format	ebook and print
Length	Novel, 424 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	01-May-2026
Price	$4.99 ebook, $16.00 paperback, $19.99 hardcover
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/Save-date-Square-Mile-Rogues-ebook/dp/B0GKVB449C