An absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking love story. I started and finished all in the same day. I laughed through most of the book and cried through the last chapters. Thank you to Jim Hutton for sharing his memories with the world. ( )

In this memoir, Jim Hutton talks about his long-term relationship with his partner Freddie Mercury. This book was just okay in my opinion. If you're looking for real biographical about Mercury, you won't find that here. It starts with the two men meeting and their developing relationship. Hutton goes into miniature details like what they bought each other for gifts on their first Christmas together. It's not exactly fascinating, although I do admire how candid Hutton is.

You do get a sense of Mercury's mercurial nature, with flashes of anger over tiny tiffs swinging into lavish shopping trips to bestow wildly generous gifts on friends and acquaintances. There is little about his career, although there are some snippets here and there; I did enjoy the story of Mercury meeting and collaborating with an opera singer he admired greatly. A good portion of the latter part of the book is dedicated to discussing Mercury's wasting away due to HIV-AIDS -- an important story to tell but a heart-breaking one as well.

The audiobook narrator did an excellent job, reading much of it in a gentle Irish accent as though you were sharing a chat with Hutton himself, and then switching to other accents as appropriate for the different people in Hutton's life. ( )

Another personal memoir I've been holding off reading - for no reason, as it turns out! Jim Hutton was Freddie's live-in lover for the last six years of his life, sharing a love of cats and the quiet life, who was also with the singer when he succumbed to AIDS in 1991. Jim, who is hopefully now reunited with 'his man' somewhere, comes across as an affable character who fell in love with the man not the name, but who enjoyed sharing Freddie's home and lifestyle. There are some sweet stories, like Jim's gift of roses arriving with a perplexing note 'From the whiff' which made Freddie laugh, and some touching moments, including Jim presenting Freddie with a 'wedding ring', but nothing too intimate, which I was afraid of. Jim does talk rather bitterly of being excluded by Mary Austin after Freddie's death, and also of being ignored by the remaining members of Queen, but I'm not sure what he expected - Freddie might have considered him part of the Garden Lodge 'family', but I get the feeling that everybody outside of the house were merely kind and friendly to Jim for Freddie's sake.

After reading, I did feel like I understood Freddie slightly better, which is more than I can say for all the 'revealing' biographies available about him. Jim knew and loved Freddie, putting his life on hold for six years, only to be dropped at the worst possible time - while grieving for his lost love. ( )