Foley’s love for his city and his engaging characters shines through, and his novel is funny, naughty, and comforting. This auspicious debut will leave readers eager for more. ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Mr. Foley’s debut unfolds the romantic and professional misadventures of this group in the dishy, funny style of Armistead Maupin and Candace Bushnell, albeit with even more cheerfully raunchy sex. . . . Mr. Foley knows the Motor City as intimately as he knows the workings of dating apps like Scruff and Grindr, and he details both with the swagger and fluency of a quality TV script. The only mystery, in fact, is which will come first: the HBO option or the sequel. ―Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
Foley creates a rich setting and strong characters. . . . Readers who enjoy character-driven romance, especially LGBTQ+ fiction, will appreciate this book. ―Library Journal
Funny, contemporary and often amusingly raunchy, Boys Come First feels almost revolutionary in the way that Dominick, Troy and Remy aren't made to experience the kind of suffering over sexual orientation that once seemed a hallmark of queer literature. Foley gives us characters who are comfortable as gay men and proud to be Black men, but are still flawed, very human, wise and foolish in roughly equal measure. ―Patrick Condon, Star-Tribune
Foley's novel shows range, with its fun, silly and pathos-filled handling of the love-and-sex storylines, serious commentary on social issues and an endearing representation of sincere (if troubled) friendships. Unforgettable characters, madcap fun and mishaps converge in this sweet and, finally, aspirational story. ―Julia Kastner, Shelf Awareness
Uproarious, sharp, sober, biting, bumpy, bruising, hip, and real. Aaron Foley's Boys Come First moves along with a graceful self-assurance, spot-on characterizations, and a genuine assessment of extraordinary, yet mundane plight of Black queer men―how we must navigate the world, protect ourselves from violence and cruelties, construct our own safe spaces, and stitch together community from the strands of chosen family. This book is so brutally honest that it's hard to believe that it's fiction. ―Robert Jones, Jr., author of New York Times bestseller The Prophets
Aaron Foley's fantastic debut is a hilarious and heartfelt story of friendship, family, longing, and lust, wrapped in a beautiful love letter to Detroit. You can't help but root for Millennials Dominick, Remy, and Troy in all their messy magnificence. Fans of Terry McMillan and E. Lynn Harris especially will rejoice at Foley's smart, evocative prose. I devoured this book. And bonus: Reading Boys Come First made this Gen Xer feel just a little bit cooler. ―Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Imagine the thirtysomething angst of Insecure meeting the queer Black friendships of Noah's Arc intersecting with the dating dilemmas of Waiting to Exhale all rolled up into the dynamics of a gentrified Detroit... and you've got Boys Come First. It's a fun novel that will have you eager to turn every page or scroll to the next screen to find out what's coming next for Dominick, Troy, and Remy. ―Frederick Smith, Busy Ain't the Half of It
My God, Aaron Foley's Boys Come First is an exhilarating debut! I'm obsessed. Sexy, heartfelt, unapologetically queer, and deliciously funny, this novel about friendship and finding love (in others and for oneself) in rapidly gentrifying Detroit really has it all. An absolute joy. ―Chris Gonzalez, I'm Not Hungry but I Could Eat
A Sex and the City meets Waiting to Exhale about millennial gay Black men, Boys Come First is full of sharp-edged shade, raunchy sex, boozy good times with ride-or-die friends, hints of love and vulnerability and even a few five-hankie moments toward the end. That it's set in the rapidly gentrifying city of Detroit by someone who knows the city inside-out only adds to the richness. I rarely say this, but once I started it I could not put it down and finished it in two nights. Equal parts sassy and sweet and a completely satisfying, very up-to-the-minute read. ―Tim Murphy, Christodora and Correspondents
It’s all fun and games with friends Remy, Dominick and Troy until they hit their 30s. As their fraught situationships and sexy entanglements start to reveal hard truths about themselves, the friends must deal with life's hard questions. Foley has written a delicious romp about the game of love. But at its core, Boys Come First is a laugh out loud story about Foley’s first love―the city of Detroit. ―Desiree Cooper, Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist and author of Know the Mother
Boys Come First [is] an account of three Black gay friends in Detroit that upends popular expectations about race, class, gender, sexuality, and masculinity. Foley’s novel evokes Brian Broome in its hilarious and very millennial perspective on what it means to be a 30-something as the first quarter of this century comes to a close, [and is] a love letter to gay Michigan. ―Ed Simon, The Millions
“Sharp characters and a striking depiction of friendship. ―Kirkus Reviews
Detroit shines here right alongside this best buddy trio of enchanting, fully realized Black men. Foley's debut will certainly be a sleeper hit this spring and should put him on the map as a writer to watch. ―Jim Piechota, the Bay Area Reporter
Boys Come First is a joy from start to finish. In telling the story of three millennial gay Black men and their friendships, relationship struggles, and career obstacles, Aaron Foley has written one of the most realistic queer novels I’ve read in years. He allows his characters to be funny, sexy, and messy, while intelligently addressing major issues like the gentrification of Detroit. Never didactic and constantly entertaining, this book is both smart AND steamy. ―David Vogel, Buzzfeed
Foley's deep love for his hometown is apparent in the ways he contextualizes Detroit's history and what people living in the city today face. The rapid state of redevelopment, gentrification, and other changes impact his characters' community and the city at large. ―Alamin Yohannes, EW
Perhaps from the outside Detroit might look like a humorless place. A native of the city, Foley shows us just how untrue that is. . . . Boys gives readers an inside view of the city and Black culture that can be radically different from the ones often portrayed in the media. This book can take you to a world much more beautiful and strange. ―Drew Philp, Shepherd
Boys Come First . . . might just be the first great gay novel about being Black, queer, and millennial in Detroit. ―Michael Collina, Audible
The three main characters, Remy, Troy and Dominick, may be fictional, but there is no doubt that their stories are those of the many Black queer men who live them out every day. ―Kenny Williams, Jr., Blavity
The storyline luxuriates in the Motor City, as it explores the bonds of friendship, gentrification and the idea of Old Detroit vs. New Detroit. ― Jill A. Greenberg, Between the Lines
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
I better not get my Black ass pulled over in hoe-ass, bitch-ass Pennsylvania, Dominick Gibson thought to himself for what must have been the fortieth time, speeding westward through the Keystone State in a rented Kia Soul that could barely maintain the eighty-fiveish miles-per-hour he’d been doing since he’d first merged onto I-80 coming out of Manhattan.
Although, getting pulled over in one of these dreary drive-by towns filled with Trump voters in whistle-stop diners and letting the officer, inevitably white and male, humiliate, beat, or haul Dominick off to jail—or maybe some combination of all of the above—would fit right in with the total shitstorm of events he’d had to endure over the last week and a half.
Just eleven days ago, Dominick had been enjoying monogamy and gainful employment in New York City. Now, in the earliest hours of this Pennsylvania morning, neither existed. He’d had very specific goals before everything had fallen apart: marriage by thirty-five, a kid one year after that, a vacation home by forty, and his own advertising firm by forty-five. But here he was now, thirty-three years old and with eight years with his ex, Justin, having led absolutely nowhere. Time was running out. Though when you’re Black, gay, and thirtysomething, time always feels like it’s running out.
The thirtysomething years are a critical age for gay men like Dominick because they have to have everything figured out by then if they don’t want to become walking stereotypes later. While Dominick was busy getting older, everyone else around him just kept getting younger. Each time he took a lingering look in the mirror, it seemed like his hairline had receded another millimeter from the last time he’d checked. Meanwhile, a new crop of boys, all with healthy hair and more-elaborate-than-ever skincare routines, kept rolling off the assembly line faster than ever.
Is everybody at the club just twenty-two now? he thought. They google how to douche; we had to learn the hard way.
Those younger men were forbidden fruit, and they would chase after guys like Dominick once he got to a certain age—that age when, if he reached it while he was still single, he would turn into the full-blown stereotype. Leering. Predatory. Old. The last thing Dominick wanted was to be someone’s daddy, a sixtysomething single man with a wrinkled chitterling dick and a hog maw butthole who thinks he’s forty years younger and creeps on anybody and everybody.
That’s the thing. If Black gay men don’t have their shit together in their thirties—the job, the two-bedroom apartment, and the boyfriend who’s about to become a fiancée and then a husband—then they’re still going to be figuring it all out in their forties and fifties when the crow’s feet start showing. And Dominick certainly did not want to be in the dating pool at forty when everyone else was twenty-two. He didn’t want to be struggling with his career at the same time either, so as he had worked hard to hold onto Justin, he had also made sure he kept climbing in the advertising world. Before it all fell apart, the two of them were planning to just settle down with each other and their peak incomes and leave all the broken and broke fortysomethings behind.
Plans gone awry consumed Dominick’s thoughts as he sped through the rest of Pennsylvania and Ohio. He barely had enough gas to make it to his mother’s front door in Detroit. But despite his infrequent visits of late, he still remembered one important thing about his hometown: do not stop for gas in the middle of the night. The low-fuel light gleamed in the dashboard as he pulled into his mother’s driveway, and he muttered a little prayer of thanks that he’d made it there without any issues. Though after almost ten hours in the car, intermittently talking to God, his best friend Troy, Siri, and an annoying woman from a collection agency, Dominick knew he would now have to talk to his mother, Tonya Gibson, who was standing in the doorway at 2:38 a.m., wondering why her son had decided to drive all the way to Detroit from his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen on a Thursday.
A half-hour later, after a quick, evasive chat with his mother and an excuse that he had a headache and just needed to sleep, Dominick laid on the full-size bed in his teenage room, his back already aching from the lumpy Art Van mattress his mother hadn’t replaced in fifteen years.
He was a gay man, a Black gay man, with a setback and without explanation.
