“Big laughs, bigger heart, and just the right amount of 90’s nostalgia—Bless This Hot Mess is pure fun. This book sings, (Literally!)” 

USA Today Bestselling Author Ella Frank

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“A fresh, funny take on love, faith, and finding your place—messy, meaningful, and totally entertaining.”

USA Today Bestselling Author Brooke Blaine
 

"Hold onto your halos... A madcap musical caper with a homo rom-com capper.

 

Existing somewhere in the day-glo gayscape between Joe Keenan and Del Shores, the whole loopy escapade feels as warm as a Sunday school bake sale held in direct sunlight. Its snappy, sassy humor that skewers everyone with mad abandon and a buttery finish. Set in 1999 Greater Napanee, Ontario (aka Avril Lavigne's hometown. Yes, that's vibe-relevant), this is a book about three misfit Christian performers — Rebekkah, Japheth, and Ronald — who catcall and pratfall their way into a jazzhands Bible-beater band, a rogue radio station, and a Mafia conspiracy with a thick drizzle of homo romance. Campy? For sure. Absurd? Proudly.

 

The trio at the center are champagne and cupcakes. Rebekkah swears she isn't plagiarizing secular pop tunes, but resurrecting them —"Like Lazarus! But with a beat." Japheth, the hot, wry fry-cook turned thirst trap, knows every cloud has a Jesus-lining. And pansexual 5'2" basketball dribbler Ronald has invented a personal theology involving free throws ("what I like to call Hoops for Jesus"), who is planning the logistics of a literal ark. The entire cast crackles with barricaded charm in the bracing comic stylings of Charlie David, a clever Canuck who mines this terrain for heavenly metal.

 

Do they start a pop-worship band for some Bible belting? Duh, obviously. Could their group be called anything but Trinity? Get real. And how does Trinity hit you? Like a tipsy pillow fight. Like a hymn sung off-key and joyfully at the top of someone's lungs, too daffy to be anything but delightful. As always, Charlie David's voice is irreverent, affectionate, and fiercely self-aware...with a deep, abiding belief in the power of community. This book has delicious echoes of Joe Keenan's Blue Heaven and Robert Rodi's Closet Case, not always in topic, but in insouciant tone.

 

But for me, the real heartbeat of the book is Japheth's sexy fracas with Rino Ferrari — a canny, slow-burn romance so sly it will reach into your chest and rearrange furniture. As Japheth puts it when the feelings break free: "taking the volume knob on my chest and turning it up from background noise to my favorite jam." And their consummation "under the watchful gaze of an apostolic school of fish and the sultry stare of the shirtless Son of God" — unfolds with a tender, tense intimacy that nimbly straddles heat and hilarity. And if you've ever truly laughed during great sex, you know what I mean. Who doesn’t love a little Mafia satire in their evangelical hustle culture?

 

If I had a gripe, the throuple misunderstanding loops a bit and the secondary staff voices at WWJD (e.g. Suwarna and Carrington) sometimes blur together, but the witty cast and goofy schemes keep the pre-Y2K mayhem clip-clopping along. And the ending — a pirate radio station launched from a homemade Ark is pitch perfect, carrying the trio and their found family toward a glorious technicolor horizon that faith broadcasting could never manage without a little help from the wilder, brighter side of the religious spectrum.

 

Worth mentioning, this book BEGS for adaptation. Why isn't this already greenlit as a TV series, like, yesterday? Why hasn't Netflix hired Cheyenne Jackson and Rebel Wilson, and rushed this into production in Hollywood North? Tick tock, bitches. Someone in Gastown is sleeping on the job! I gotta make some calls, yo.

 

And look, if you think this sounds nutty coming from a gay romance guy: I grew up in THE megachurch metropolis. My degree is in religion/philosophy and I speak fluent Christianese. I KNOW the weird, wonderful world this books navigates. If anything, Charlie David tones down the bustling hustle of the Bible-thump economy and the ways it intersects with real faith and lived lives. He knows that the best showbiz taps serious issues, that flimflam and faith are closer than clasped hands, and that even the most godly intentions can spawn a wacky, tacky scam.

 

Bless This Hot Mess is the farcical found-family musical you didn't know you were craving. Whether it's poolside in the gayborhood, or curled up on your couch when you need some divine comedy, read it somewhere you're allowed to giggle and praise the gays aloud."
Damon Suede, Author of Hot Head, top 100 Romance novels of all time.