Cover Image: The Inverts

The Inverts

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Member Reviews

Bettina and Bart have been best friends since childhood. When a test kiss goes horribly wrong, there goes their future, or does it? Both Bettina and Bart are gay, but perhaps a lavender marriage while they pursue other romances might be just the ticket to a successful and happy life. But the course of true love, and the lives of queer folks throughout history, never do go as planned. With a lavish lifestyle of sex, drugs, and jazz, Bettina and Bart are on a crash course to disaster that will lead to a decades long mystery.

This book was just okay for me. I wasn’t particularly endeared to the characters, and at least anecdotally, Bart’s relationships and woes were more center stage than Bettina’s. I kind of skimmed the second half, and while I stuck around to figure out the mystery introduced in the opening pages, I wasn’t engaged with the story. I felt that the author had a huge task of covering a massive amount of time, and that can be daunting as well as present the issue of having to gloss over certain parts of time and relationships and what not.

I’m not going to not recommend this book, because queer rep always, particularly in historical fiction, but overall, it’s not one I super enjoyed.

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Bettina and Bart are friends with benefits – if one of those benefits is a lavender marriage wherein they can be wedded to each other – and love each other very much – but not be in love with each other. In fact, both are gay and getting hitched seems a great idea: society (it is 1921) will leave them alone so they can still enjoy their own liaisons. It sounds like the perfect solution to their worries… but is it? The decade of decadence – my favourite period to read books about – ensures they’re never bored, but neither friend could predict how life was going to take quite a few different turns. Quite unlike anything I’d read before but the writing, oh, I would read this over and over. Funny, warm, scathing in parts and shrewd throughout, this is a clever read that stays with you long after you’ve finished.

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This book was funny in parts, and felt true to life. I struggled a little due to not being a huge fan of either of the main characters, and the fact that nothing nice seemed to happen to them at all, it was just a list of hit after hit for the main characters that ended kind of abruptly.

Overall, a good book for people who are looking for accurate historical LGBTQ+ representation.

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NOTE: if you want a sweet and inoffensive story this is the wrong book
I loved this story! The characters are witty, sometimes cruel and often very funny.
It's a good story and it kept me hooked. It's entertaining and sad at the same time, a lot of humor but the historical background is not very happy.
There's plenty of sex but there's also friendship and a good story.
I loved it and I want to read other books by this author.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

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This is an unapologetically queer novel, funny, sad, bittersweet. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Inversts tells the story of a pair of best friends, both gay, who subvert the homophobic, conservative 1920s. Essentially, they agree to be each other's beards and get married, so they can continue to have relationships with people of their choice. It is a story about friendship, how it's tested and strained, and how it holds together despite everything.

Thanks for the review copy, NetGalley.

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Bettina and Bart, having grown up as childhood friends and having discovered they preferred their own sex, agree upon a marriage to hide their homosexuality, which was a crime in the 1920s and 30s in which this story is mostly set. A good setting for an interesting story, but sorry to say, I was very disappointed.

Not only are the characters all very unlikeable, self-centred and superficial, there is no real story behind it, just an endless chain of parties, drugs, alcohol and superficial often violent sex inbetween, decorated with a lot of swearwords and verbal abuse. There is no development, peak or any hope for better relationships. The crime towards the end did nothing for it too. Only the last chapter showed a bit of humanity.

I wouldn´t have finished the book if it weren´t for a review. So thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing an ebook in exchange for an honest review.

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In The Inverts, we see the lives of Bart and Bettina, two childhood friends who enter into a Lavender marriage and live a decadent lifestyle full of drink, drugs and affairs.

This is an absolute train wreck in slow motion, and I have to say that I am completely here for that. We know that something bad is going to happen because we're told at the beginning of the book, and then after that the whole story is building up to that moment. I'm keeping it vague to avoid spoilers, but there was definite tension as I waited to see how things were going to go down, which I really liked.

About the characters. Well, everyone in this book is absolutely awful. There were pretty much no characters that I liked, and it felt a bit like watching soaps or reality TV. I did feel for the main characters at times, but most of the time I just really didn't like them, and felt they were kind of getting what they deserved. Or, at times when things seemed to be going alright, that they were getting more than they deserved.

The book has a great sense of atmosphere, and the place and time came across really well. However, the plot dragged a little at times, and then ended rather abruptly. I did enjoy the book, although I did need to read something with nicer characters afterwards!

3.5 stars.

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This is a breathtaking, and. Brilliantly witty and course novel. I loved both of these characters and found them lovable and roguish in equal measure. They just spring off the page and fill you with joy. Wonderful cast of characters and intoxicating story. Might need a cocktail or two to enjoy the spirit of this novel.

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I loved reading The inverts! Bettina and Bert are amazing main characters and I love their characterization, their bond and how strong and stubborn they are! The story is brilliant, funny and made me think so much about queer love, friendship and loyalty!

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Bart and Bettina have grown up together, privileged and good-looking, too young to be personally affected by the Great War (though Bettina's older brother came home with a bad case of shellshock and a single arm). At the outset of the Roaring Twenties, they are discovering adult life, and coming (via separate experiences) to the same conclusion: they are both inverts. Bart is seduced by a gorgeous young French artist, Etienne, on a school trip to Paris; Bettina is caught in flagrante, in the school boiler room, with her friend Margo.

It seems inevitable that they should marry: they love one another, they share a sense of humour and a defensive prickliness, and neither of them is likely to be a good spouse to anybody. Cue wild parties, booze and drugs, a career in movies for Bart, a series of best-selling books by Bettina -- and, bookending it all, a murder mystery.

The blurb gives the impression that this is a light-hearted romp through the Twenties and Thirties, and it is often very funny: but it's also painful and sometimes depressing. Neither Bart nor Bettina is especially lucky in love, and despite their early promises to be kind to one another they treat one another very cruelly. Most importantly, though, they are not characters that I could warm to. There's a sneeriness to them, a disdain for their 'friends' and families, and a strong vein of hypocrisy in their attitudes. At different times, both try to overcome their innate prejudices: Bettina manages it during the Second World War when she's working as a rat-catcher, Bart achieves it from time to time, but they're both too selfish, too superficial, for it to really stick.

The language is lush and sensual, with a lot of food-based metaphors -- though these sometimes jar in conjunction with the frequent slurs against fatness. Descriptions of the physical often tend towards the earthy or even the gross: sweat, vomit, Bart's brush with the Spanish Flu. Glasses and cigarette butts are lipstick-stained, and everyone has bad breath. There is a relentless insistence on bodily functions: Bettina letting loose a long-held fart, Bart burping into his whisky, a newborn baby already leaking urine.

Which is not to say that the story isn't interesting: the arc of Bettina and Bart's relationship with each other and their myriad affairs, the raucous parties and decadent soirees of the Twenties and Thirties, the secrets within families and the openly queer folk in the London arts milieu. Some fun cameos, some poignant moments: if only they had happened to nicer people ...

Thanks to Netgalley for the free review copy!

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Ok, whew. Here we go, I guess. I was going into this book, hoping for a fun, dramatic read with serious undertones, I was expecting glitter and a bit of queer history. What I got instead was… something different. I’m not sure where to start, but I really did not like this book. I wanted to, but I unfortunately did not.

The thing is, I can like books even when the protagonists are unlikeable. Not in this case, though. The protagonists were horrible and to be honest, the side characters weren’t exactly better. Bettina is headstrong, always needs to be in the right and really petty. And she is a hypocrite. How to describe Bart, though? He really likes sex and sexual encounters in general. Bettina does, too, but I’m not sure how describe Bart other than either indifferent or aggressive and out for sex.Oh, did I mention they’re both quite superficial? And selfish?

I couldn’t really understand their friendship. They’re supposed to be best friends and while they do know each other really well, they are constantly fighting or making trouble or being angry at each other. They apparently have the same humor and find each other incredibly funny but for me, they were mostly just rude or annoying.

The protagonists are very sexually active. All. The. Time. Do they have any hobbies, really? Other than seeing a human being and wanting to sleep with them? And then, more often than not, actually sleeping with them? I don’t think so.
Their families weren’t better. Their mothers were both gossiping all the time, the fathers died at some point. The siblings, too. The lovers? Uhhhh. There was just depth missing.

I also really had problems with the pacing. There is this subplot that frames the main story set in the 1990s. It was off-putting and in my opinion, didn’t add anything to the story except confusion. I guess it’s supposed to make it more interesting, bring a murder mystery into it, but I just found it a bit unnecessary.

And I thought the book would be mostly set in the 20s and a bit the 30s, theose decades really „whizz“ past, as it says in the synopsis. There are a lot of time leaps so that you suddenly get thrown into a complete situation than the one in the chapter before and it really put me off. Some things I’d like to have discussed in greater detail were just thrown under the rug, never to be mentioned again. I would have liked to see the characters deal with grief, for example. Or with their addictions. But they never do.

Then there’s the matter with genitals. And bodily fluids. Both were mentioned very often, sometimes at seemingly random points in the story. Sometimes in a sexual context, sometimes, as I said just completely random. And I really do not need vivid descriptions of bodily fluids and what they look like and taste like and… just, no.

I just felt very uncomfortable reading this book. I wish there would have been trigger warnings, because I had to put it down at several times or skip a few pages because I couldn’t deal with it. Please take the trigger warnings I gave above seriously.
But yes, I wasn’t a big fan of the book. Neither the plot nor the characters could really capture me. It made me feel slightly sick and uncomfortable. I wish I could say something positive but I really can’t. There was jsut too much going on there, the ever present fatphobia, the various drugs, homophobia, … I don’t even know where to start and stop.

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I hate writing bad reviews because I know there's an actual human being behind this who put a lot of effort and time into writing this. And I implore you, if you're the author and don't want to see negative things written about your work, please stop reading here.

I initially gave this book two stars after finishing it because I thought: Well, I did like the first 100 or so pages. Then, after sleeping on it, I just couldn't. And here is why.

While the story itself sounds like fun and glam and two best friends making the best of being stuck in the 20s (all things that drew me to this book), that took up about one chapter. Everything else was just a little off for me. There's this added "suspense" with a murder mystery shoved in there which was the biggest anti-climax I've ever read in my life. It's there in the first chapter, it's there in the last chapter but it's... not exciting an dare I say even a little boring?

Okay, let's talk about the characters. I didn't like any of them. Not a single character. Not one. There were some that had moments where I felt like I could start to like them only to be absolute idiots a second later. It is hard to read a book if you're not rooting for anyone or even sympathising. Especially when they're the main characters. Why did I not like them you ask? Well, this ties in nicely with my next point.

Who here loves trigger warnings? I do. Because there are just some things that I stay away from. From how this book was presented, I did not see suicide, drug abuse (though let's be real, it's the 20s, I did expect drugs in one form or another), sexual harassment, murder, a very weird fascination with genitals and so on and so on, to be in this book. But it was.

The MCs also came across a bit predator-y with both of them fancying anyone of their own gender with a pulse and constantly daydreaming about sex. Except for one time, when one of the MCs did more than daydream and actually harassed their household staff. And when the person resigns, they think about how that's ridiculous and over reacting. Just no. Generally, this book relies a lot on disgusting descriptions and I am not quite sure why. Everything smells horrible, everyone's teeth are rotting, if someone is losing bodily fluids we WILL know about it and I don't like it. I also didn't like the obsession with genitals. I did not need to know how every single character's genitals look like ESPECIALLY those of kids. I kind of kept slowly blinking at the book when the description of a newborn was 5 lines long and 3 of them was about genitals. NO. I even read this part out to three friends to see if I am being too "snowflakey" but they were absolutely horrified. So was I and I still am, frankly. After that, I kind of just wanted this book to end and I was only about halfway through.

Not that I would have missed a lot if I'd stopped right there and then because to me, my summary is that I wish I hadn't read it. I was triggered, I felt really anxious during and after reading it, I was disgusted and uncomfortable and for the murder mystery then ending like that was... well, a letdown honestly. I wouldn't recommend this book. Sorry.

edit: I forgot about the fatphobia. Which is there all the time. It's gross.

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I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review – as always, thanks so much to Netgalley for sending this to me!

The Inverts follows Bart and Bettina, two best friends who share a unique predicament: their sexuality. Bart is gay, Bettina is a lesbian, neither will ever be satisfied in a heterosexual relationship. The only sensible option, of course, is to marry each other. After all, they’re best friends, platonic soul-mates – what could possibly go wrong?

The book spans several decades of Bart and Bettina’s ‘lavender marriage,’ as they navigate various secret love affairs: Bart’s relationship with a French artist, Etienne; Bettina’s schoolgirl fumbles; Bart’s secret nighttime trysts in parks; new love unexpectedly found in war-torn Britain. I’m obsessed with this dynamic in fiction – a gay man and a lesbian becoming best friends and marrying to help protect one another – and these two were fantastic. They love each other, they hate each other. Their friendship, idyllic to begin with, is at times toxic and turbulent, but they care so much. They’re the definition of ride or die, and I loved their dynamic. It’s worth mentioning that neither of them are saints; they’re messy, cruel, manipulative, stroppy, and kind of awful in a way that makes for fantastic reading. If unlikeable characters are a deal-breaker for you, this book might not work for you, but I had so much fun. Even when they were awful, they were entertaining, and what else can you ask for?

I feel like it’s been well-established that historical fiction is not generally my thing. I’m a contemporary girl, but I’ve wanted to get into historical settings, in particular the 1920s, which is a period I’m very drawn to on an aesthetic level. I’ve read so many books set in this era, chasing a very specific, Gatsby-esque atmosphere: glitter and corruption, prohibition, decadence, flappers and finger waves, and I’m overjoyed to say that I finally found it. This book was all sex, drugs, more sex, booze, old movies, boarding schools and mansions and rolling countryside. It had a strong sense of time and place that was really grounding, and I think the author did a great job of capturing the feel of each time period. The best way I can describe this book is Oscar Wilde meets The Great Gatsby; it’s decadent, queer as hell, super messy, and filled with awful but amazingly compelling people. It also gave me Addie LaRue vibes in some ways – Bart’s first love, Etienne, reminded me irresistibly of Remy, a character Addie loves and loses all in one night.

I was genuinely so pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this book, with all its mess and mayhem. It was, at its core, a book about queer friendship and solidarity. I didn’t realise how long I’ve been looking for a book like this until I found it. That being said, there were a few issues that I had with it.

Firstly, as mentioned, the book is told in a series of snapshots as we fit bits and pieces of Bart and Bettina’s life together. At times this worked well, but other times it made things feel disjointed and a bit disorienting – sometimes we skip a few days, other times years, and scenes would start and finish in the middle of nowhere with no real sense of context. It was almost as if some scenes had popped into the author’s head half-formed, she’d put them into the book and left it at that, an approach I can definitely sympathise with as a writer – but as a reader, it doesn’t really work. I felt some context was sorely needed in some instances. It almost felt more like a screenplay in some ways, with these random jumps in time and place. (As a side note, if this were a movie, I’d SO watch it. Hollywood, take notes.)

There’s also some weirdness with the framing narrative. The story opens with Bart and Bettina’s kids all grown up, there’s some vague murmurs of a murder, which is swiftly forgotten and not referred to again until the end. I think this was supposed to inject a sense of intrigue into the narrative, but because it’s never brought up again, it just felt kind of pointless – like it was being dangled under our noses the whole time but without any additional hints or allusions to what might have happened, just the vague knowledge that it was a thing and would presumably be addressed again at some point. When it was, it was kind of underwhelming, to be honest. I liked the murder itself, but why introduce it so early on if it’s going to be completely irrelevant for 95% of the book?

Finally, while I loved the writing style – which is mostly rich, detailed and evocative – it is also, on many occasions, gross. Yes, bodies are disgusting, people aren’t perfect, they ooze and leak and whatever, but I really don’t want to hear about it. It was so jarring to me that on one hand we have descriptions about Bart emerging from the water like a gleaming salmon, and then on the next page, graphic descriptions of crusty snot, hissing farts and – on one occasion I would really like to erase from my memory – baby genitals. I’m not especially precious, but I definitely felt squeamish at times, and I wish the author had held back a bit with these descriptions, because honestly they were super disgusting and made me cringe.

Overall, though The Inverts was a pleasant surprise, and I loved this celebration of messy queer friendship, camaraderie and the different kinds of enduring love that one finds over a lifetime. I think this is definitely a book that’s going to stick with me.

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“The Inverts” is a historical novel set in the ‘20s, England, about two queer best friends who enter a marriage of convenience. I’m glad that I read other reviews before reading, because it prepare me for the book it is, instead of the book that was marketed to be. It is a book about queerness and friendship, by it’s less of a celebration and more of a nuanced look into the complexities of being queer in the first half of the last century and the specific relationship between Bart and Bettina.

I still really liked the story and I enjoyed the exploration of the characters and their relationships, which I found interesting and human, despite having many issues. My main problem with the book is that I’d like to see more of the historical aspect of the novel, at some point in the story I truly forgot this was supposed to be in another time, because of the very sparse descriptions around the characters. At times, the book passed as a contemporary novel about people who are very rich and queer, and even if that could be a comment on how the upper classes work, besides the blatant homophobia and the references to historic events and characters who were queer, the queerness of the book also seemed quite modern.

In any case, I still enjoyed the book and I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
#NetGalley #THEINVERTS

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Possible spoilers


I absolutely adored Barts and Betts, they were fun,charming,frivolous and ever so slightly smutty. Or perhaps slutty.

They picked a perfect relationship and they made it work.

But as the book went on I adored them less,as is the way,when their selfishness and pig headedness came more to light.

Glad to say I adored the book all the way through,and it's a slice of mischeiviousness I'll be recommending to quite a few others.

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Bert and Bettina, both gay, enter into a lavender marriage to confirm to society's expectations at the time, but that doesn't mean they don't have love affairs in secret. You won't always warm to the two but you will laugh at the caustic humour and be drawn in by the whirl of the 1920s and 30s. But tragedy awaits ...

This novel drew me in and kept me turning the pages.

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I really wanted to love this, and it started out so well! Everything about this book is absolutely vivid, Jeans paints a great picture of two absolutely self-obsessed people from money who both realise they are queer in a time when it was absolutely unacceptable to be so.

It’s not that characters have to be likeable to make a good story, but you do have to want to keep reading about them, and around the halfway point I just, didn’t. They were awful to each other and everyone around them, and descriptions of their debauched lives went from fun to honestly a bit depressing to read about. I thought I was getting a fun queer read about a lavender marriage in the 20’s, two friends against it all - and the book certainly starts off suggesting this - but it got to the point where I couldn’t understand why they were still friends, let alone marrying each other.

It’s such a shame to be writing this review as it seemed like this was going to be such a fun read!

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A platonic romance - refreshing to read.

I loved the relationship between Bart and Bettina. The world was well built and the language throughout incredible. I devoured the first half of the book, but I did feel the plot slow down towards the middle to end and was a bit put off by the souring of their relationship which was what I thought made the story special.

The ending did pull it back and I found the epilogue particularly sweet and realistic - having know elderly relatives in similar situations with their partners.

Overall, it was a good novel but it left me feeling a bit unsatisfied.

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The Inverts is about a marriage between Bettina and Bartholomew, one that will give them the veneer of respectability beneath which they can let their true desires rip. Aged seventeen, Bart makes a lunge at the gorgeously voluptuous Bet who he’s known all his life but feels nothing. Four years later facts are faced: both prefer their own sex but this is the 1920s, respectability must be maintained and they hit on the perfect solution. Why not marry each other? Their honeymoon is spent in Paris where Bart introduces Bet to Étienne, the love of his life. Bart’s acting career takes him to Hollywood accompanied by Étienne while Bet enjoys her own adventures in London. As the years march on, their marriage becomes stormier eventually ruptured by a particularly vituperative row until, on a visit to her mother, Bet is discovered in flagrante which leads to a reconciliation with Bart thanks to an act that will come back to haunt them.

Crystal Jeans’ novel manages to be both hilarious and poignant. Both Bet and Bart are careless of their privilege, caught up in their pursuit of pleasure to the point of being thoroughly obnoxious spoiled brats but they’re also outrageously funny, occasionally endearing and their war experiences improve them no end. Jeans pokes pleasing fun at the upper classes while managing to retain our affection for this louche couple who are the stars of the show, weaving vivid period detail through their various shenanigans. If you’re after a bit of a romp with an unusual premise and don’t mind a bit of filth with your humour, I’d recommend this one.

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I really struggled with this one, I'm not totally sure why, I just don't think it was for me. I have seen so many good reviews for this and I wanted to love it, but I suppose that's what makes reading interesting....we can't all like the same things in life! Thank you anyway NetGalley and publishers for letting me give this one a go

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