Place Published: Braddock, PA
Publisher: Braddock Avenue Books
Date Published: 2026
ISBN: 9798218727086

Synopsis:

After discovering his long-time girlfriend’s infidelity, and with no plan for a future in Tennessee without her, Finn leaves the only home he has ever known to live in Boston. One evening, Finn is reflecting on his increasingly complex sexuality when his roommate urges him to find a new partner—one that she expects will be a man. This leads him to match on a dating app with Jj, a young man whose precocious sexuality compels Finn to experiment. Although Jj continues to find reasons to avoid meeting, and eventually disappears completely, Finn is unable to forget him. He is pulled back to Tennessee by an old friend’s overdose, and begins to contemplate the sexual tension that has existed between them since their youth. Until the end of the novel, in which Finn has moved back home, Jj has a phantom-like existence in Finn’s life, prompting him to open up to who he has always been, and in the process, form a new perspective on loss. 

 

Loverboy is a moving debut novel of self-discovery and surrender. By juxtaposing humorous lines with tones of lust and yearning, Lukas Tallent has written an authentic story connecting expressivity to acceptance, and vulnerability to the pasts we hope to reconcile.