Golden Boy
By Freddie Braun.
By Freddie Braun.
How well do you really know the people who become your entire world at eighteen?
Golden Boy follows Felix as he arrives at university in Aberdeen and finds himself absorbed into a new group of friends. Jess, Julian, the two Sarahs and Colin quickly become the centre of his life, bringing with them the intense friendships, attraction, mistakes and complicated relationships that come with discovering who you are away from home.
I really enjoyed Felix as the central character. There is a vulnerability to him that makes his experiences feel incredibly personal, particularly as he navigates his sexuality, attraction and the desire to belong. His feelings for Colin are complicated further by his developing connection with teaching assistant Filip, and the author captures that confusing period of wanting other people while still trying to understand yourself particularly well.
The friendships were just as important to me as the romantic relationships. These characters become incredibly close incredibly quickly, in that very particular way university friendships sometimes do. They're staying up late together, drinking cheap wine, sharing secrets and building the kind of friendships that can feel permanent when you're eighteen.
Aberdeen is also a fantastic setting. The historic university buildings, granite, grey skies, fog and Gothic architecture give the story an almost dark-academia atmosphere. The descriptions are beautifully written without losing the rawness of Felix's experiences, and I could easily picture the university and the city surrounding him.
Running alongside university life is something considerably darker. The Aberdeen Ripper has returned, bringing a murder investigation into a story that initially feels much more focused on friendship and self-discovery. When Jess becomes one of the victims, everything Felix thought he understood about his friends begins to fracture.
I liked the contrast between the beauty of the setting and the ugliness gradually emerging beneath it. The psychological elements also work particularly well alongside Felix's studies, especially as he begins learning about human behaviour while simultaneously discovering how difficult it can be to truly understand the people closest to you.
Although Felix provides the main perspective, occasionally moving into the minds of other characters gives the story additional depth. I particularly appreciated the chapters involving Jess because they allowed her to exist beyond simply being Felix's friend or a piece of the mystery.
What stayed with me most, though, was the emotional side of the story rather than the thriller element. Golden Boy is ultimately about a group of young people trying to understand themselves and each other at a time when everything feels enormous. Love, friendship, rejection and grief are messy, and the characters are allowed to make mistakes without feeling reduced to those mistakes.
The later developments take the story into much darker territory, forcing Felix to reconsider relationships and memories he had previously understood completely differently. There are some painful moments, but they never overshadow the tenderness running through much of the story.
For a debut, I thought this was particularly impressive. The writing is poetic, the Scottish university setting is wonderfully atmospheric and the characters feel distinctive enough that I rarely struggled to remember who was who despite the size of the friendship group.
Golden Boy combines a coming-of-age story with queer relationships, dark academia and murder, but its strongest element for me was its portrayal of those intense early-adult years when friendship can feel like family and being chosen by the right people can seem like the most important thing in the world.
I'm definitely interested to see what the author writes next! Thank you to Literally PR for running this book-tour. The book is out now and available to purchase.
