Big Gay Wedding by Byron Lane is a queer contemporary fiction novel with romance elements (5/5 stars)

Big Gay Wedding by Byron Lane is a queer contemporary fiction novel with romance elements.

Barnett Durang is coming home to visit his mother Chrissy at her farm for misfit animals in small town Louisiana. She thinks he’s finally come home to tell her he wants to follow in her footsteps and take over the farm. In just a few weeks, they’ll throw the biggest gay wedding their town has ever seen.

I read this book very quickly over the course of a few sittings. It made me both laugh out loud and sob multiple times. The book is written in third person present tense and follows widowed mother Chrissy more so than her son. We follow her lovely growth arc in regards to acknowledging that Barnett is gay and learning how to support him unconditionally.

Some of this book goes really over the top, which you might expect in a book called “Big Gay Wedding.” But the relationships between Barnett and his fiancée Ezra, between mothers and sons, and between other family members still felt very authentic. The family at the core of this book is great. There are layered characters here on all sides. Barnett’s grandfather, Paw-Paw, was probably my favorite character.

CW: humane animal death, homophobia, homophobic slurs, bigotry, grief, drug use

I received a copy of this book to review. All opinions contained herein are my own. Big Gay Wedding releases on Tuesday, May 30th, 2023.