Starts with a solid setup, rushes through a few common and somewhat artificial tropes to get to a happy ending that maybe could have been better earned. What rescued this from a lower rating (I did debate between three and four stars) was how much I loved the characters.
Jia is a hot mess in many ways, and she’s painfully aware of it because she believes she’s the current black sheep of the family. While they may often see her impulsiveness as a negative quality, the story frames it positively (and to some extent uses it to justify the rushed wedding.)
Dev can go on my book boyfriend list with a big gold star next to his name, because at every point in the plot he takes Jia seriously–her grievances against his family because of the situation that brings them together, her job, her needs and desires–and it’s clear that no one else in Jia’s life has ever done that to the same extent. Which obviously makes them perfect for each other, and I’m thrilled about that!
The plot… ugh. It does jump through a series of really common tropes (there’s only one bed, fake dating, fake or real engagement, let’s get married tomorrow) and tropes in and of themselves aren’t evil, having so many crammed together in such a small space (the second half of the book) felt like an escalating comedy of errors, only not in a good way. I see why this is the way it has to go, to some extent, in order to get these two to a happy ending: neither of them, for their various personal reasons, is going to hop in the sack before marriage, and I respect that. But it does mean in order to get the sex scene before the end, everything else needs to rush to get them there.
I did still enjoy it, obviously, and any problems aside, four stars feels like the right rating because I liked it better than The Right Swipe (which I gave three,) but not as much as Girl Gone Viral (which I gave five but it could have been six or ten or twenty, if that were the scale.)
I already liked Alessandro just fine because I could tell some sort of wonderfully juicy vulnerability was hiding under that smooth exterior, and now it’s on full display (at least to Catalina and the readers.)
I already liked Catalina just fine because she was struggling to come into her own under an overwhelming wave of outside pressures, and now she’s much more confident and cannier about how she presents herself to others, manipulating them by showing them different faces. (ie, she’s more like Alessandro from the previous book, even if she keeps insisting she’s starting to become her grandmother.)
So the romance is a grand roller coaster of fun and the right amount of angst.
But what really stepped up in this novel compared to the earlier installments in the series was the main plot. Stakes were definitely raised, to the point where I’m actually worried that Ruby Fever won’t be able to raise them further–our plucky heroes having to deal with something that is a literal existential threat to humanity feels really big and possibly un-toppable.
Add to that the continuing presence and expansion of the family surrounding Catalina–bringing Runa in from former-client status to almost-family is a good call, for basically the same reasons I was happy to see Cornelius stick around. Leon and Bern are still awesome. Grandma Frida is still a total badass. Arabella is starting to grow up a little more and got an excellent chance to be clever in a plot-relevant way. I love all them all!
I’m hooked. I like Catalina better than Nevada, and Alessandro better than Rogan. This is the superior couple, and they’re not even a couple yet, because of Reasons.
Yeah, sometimes it felt a little juvenile in comparison, but Catalina is still having her coming-of-age arc that started in Diamond Fire. A large part of this plot is her growing up, in the sense of accepting her responsibilities. The central conflict of her possible romance with Alessandro is, in fact, those responsibilities. If sometimes her internal narrative sounds a little like adult authors trying too hard to sound like a teenager, I can forgive that in this case.
Alessandro is a witty and flirtatious playboy one second and a stone cold badass the next. There’s another conflict for you–who is he, really? What’s his deal? We know why Catalina doesn’t think a relationship between them would work, despite wanting one anyway. But Alessandro appears to feel the same way, even while we only get the barest hint of his reasons for that assessment. It’s vaguely tragic and maybe a little hammy, but then, so is he, with his “Instagram” persona. I still adore him.
I like the new direction the main plot is taking re: Catalina’s involvement in the larger magical society, I thought that was interesting. The revelation of a certain someone’s secret authority explains a lot, though still leaves me with some questions about the conspiracy that we apparently put to bed after the first three books–I’m not convinced there’s not more going on, still, given the suspicions I had then, and “Caesar’s” identity still hasn’t been settled. I haven’t forgotten about that loose end!
Happy to see the next book is out, sad to see book 6 isn’t expected until much later this year, because I’m sure I’m going to want it the second I’m finished with book 5.
I congratulate this novella for doing something I rarely see them do: tackling a story idea that suits itself to the novella length. A few romance novellas I’ve read are glorified short stories with thin plot and extra padding, but by far most of them are actually novel- or near-novel-length ideas with rushed pacing and something else cut for time, be it character development, setting description, whatever. Novellas frequently try to do too much, and this one felt like the perfect length for what it wanted to accomplish.
It also serves as an excellent bridge to cross over from Nevada’s POV in the first three book and this novella’s prologue, to Catalina’s POV. While she’s stepping into Nevada’s role in the story as protagonist, and into her shoes as well in-universe as a private investigator, her methods, personality, and character voice are all distinct, even with a relatively short amount of time to nail them down. Catalina does not already have years of experience dealing with people, and it shows; this also naturally leads to the touching moment at the end when Rogan’s mother steps up to be Catalina’s mentor.
The major flaw I felt this had was to populate Rogan’s extended family with so many people. I understand that as a mini heist mystery, we had to have a decent field of suspects; but when Catalina herself mentions that the long Spanish names are confusing, especially when there are so many of them, I groaned a little at the obvious lampshading of an author-created problem. It’s not that I had trouble tracking the most important ones once their subplots were set up, but I did wonder why there were a generous handful of names leftover that didn’t end up being important to the plot at all. Couldn’t some of those have been trimmed out during the editing phase?
After reading this, I’m really looking forward to the next book.
A solid conclusion to Nevada’s trilogy within the larger series, but it fell down on enough minor stuff that no matter how much I enjoyed parts of it, it’s not a five-star finale.
I love that Cornelius, the client from book two, is still around in his new capacity. Compared to Rogan he’s definitely painted as a beta male and less desirable (not that he’s remotely a love interest possibility in universe, just in general) but I love that he’s a good, caring dad, he’s intelligent and willing to learn from his mistakes, and he’s constantly surrounded by animals like a Disney Princess. A+ supporting character.
I thought the conspiracy plot was finished off well (aside from that one all-important detail, which I’ll get back to later) and most of the action surrounding it was fine. I did think that the Final Boss himself was a bit of a letdown, not in terms of power, but in terms of plot importance–the encounters with his henchmen earlier had more personal stakes, and the escalation to “but now we have to save the city from this semi-madman who wants to destroy it to escape the consequences of his actions” was a pretty big jump and somehow actually felt less important than saving the kids did earlier.
The weakest part of the book to me overall was Rynda, both in her capacity as client, and as Rogan’s ex. Sure, her husband was kidnapped and that’s what starts the plot moving, but at all points she’s a pretty terrible person to everyone involved (except her kids, in theory, though we don’t actually see her parenting them at all, they’re just props for her to worry about) and something about her behavior always rang false to me in a way that the story wasn’t accounting for. I understand that she’s supposed to be an empath who doesn’t use her powers because she’s convinced everyone hates her and she feels deeply unloved, which she then turns outward into being an off-putting person as a defense mechanism. But her excessively needy behavior and reliance on men to solve her problems never squared neatly with that, and her desperate attempts to get Rogan back, especially late in the story, were in direct conflict with what she’d said earlier about how she was actually frightened of Rogan. Also, Edward seemed like a decent guy in the end, so why on earth did he pine so bad for Rynda when she’s such an unlovable person, both in terms of suitability under House strictures (her genetic wild card status) and her general pattern of horrible behavior? What on earth does he see in her? I can’t understand it.
As for the very, very end, the epilogue…I’m not the greatest at figuring out mystery identities, but the unnamed man gives himself away with a key line of dialogue we’ve already heard him say, and we know that our intrepid investigators didn’t find the head of the conspiracy, so clearly that’s who he is. I feel great, in one sense, that I figured something out when usually I’d be scratching my head in confusion, but on the other hand, this feels so blatantly obvious that I almost don’t believe I’ve uncovered anything, that this is somehow another layer of plot confusion and maybe the head of the conspiracy is Somehow Good Actually. I genuinely don’t know if I’m overthinking this because I’m so unused to having this level of knowledge. I’m probably going to be second-guessing myself as the series moves forward.
Five stars for being an addictive read that I tore through in less than 24 hours. Maybe only four for the actual plot–this suffers slightly from what I presume is middle-book syndrome, where everything that’s up in the air at the end of the first novel (the romance, the conspiracy plot) still has to be an least somewhat unresolved at the end of the second so that we can tie it all up (hopefully) in the third.
As I said with Burn for Me, the primary romance dynamic is still roughly the same as Kate and Curran from the Kate Daniels series; Incredibly Powerful Alpha meets a Plucky Female Private Investigator who doesn’t put up with his bullshit. And yes, I still like it. But what I like more is that in between all these crazy action scenes, we get to know both of them better and both have moved away from that reductive framework I slotted them into at first. Nevada is defined by her love for her family and the pressure of her (at least partially self-imposed) responsibilities towards them. Rogan is struggling with how his highly unusual military service has affected his mindset and personality. Both seem to spend a lot of time wondering how tenable a relationship is for them beyond their wild and compelling sexual attraction, and that’s still a question at the end of the story, though matters have (*cough*) progressed in some respects.
As we get to know Nevada we’re also getting to know her family better, and I have to say I like them too. It’s only snippets at this point because there are a fair number of them as a supporting cast, but they not only feel like real people but interesting ones: I look forward to watching the younger ones come into their magic as the series progresses (because I peeked ahead and I know that one of Nevada’s sisters will move up to protagonist status.) Meanwhile, I will wonder quietly about potential future romances for Leon and Bern (extremely unlikely, I know, but an interesting thought exercise in what sort of stories they would star in) and look forward to both this arc’s conclusion with the next book, and the start of Catalina’s down the road.
A return to Earth and the inn and Dina coincides with a drop in how much I like it, but we’re back down to the level of the first book, not its follow-ups. This was thin, and I was never able to engage much with either the Space Chicken plot (though I did very much like the illustration of one of them, and I did find them funny as occasional comic relief) or the “main” plot involving the Drifan. Either I missed something, or something that would have made the arc of her plot clearer needed to be included, because I just didn’t ever get what was going on there. Sure, she’s human, she misses Earth, I’m fine with her personality as a character, but why does she have to meet her uncle again and what are the stakes here? The motives behind the action didn’t track for me, and without that, the climax wasn’t particularly satisfying.
This is so short, as well, and romance in the main series plot is so incidental, that I didn’t even feel much at Sean becoming an Innkeeper and living and working with Dina. I should be happier for them, but there just wasn’t much meat to any of this, so I had nothing to sink my teeth into.
The best of the series so far, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence I like it better because there’s more cohesive world-building as we dive deeper into vampire culture, and more romance, since this is functionally a spin-off where we have one book to get Maud and Arland together, rather than stretching it out over the course of a series.
I like Maud better than Dina as a protagonist, because she’s got more going on than the constant refrain of “make the inn happy, but also someday maybe find my parents,” which is certainly a reasonable goal but not a very exciting one because nothing ever happens to further it, it’s always just hanging over her head as a mystery. Maud, on the other hand, has a half-vampire daughter to raise and decisions to make about how best to do that, which give her much more immediate goals to pursue.
And also puts Arland in her way as a romantic hero. I’ve always liked him; in fact early on, when it still seemed he was one choice in a love triangle, I actually liked him better than Sean, who fortunately has grown on me since. But Arland shines here in his element as a leader of his people, as a skilled combatant, and as a stellar candidate for a step-dad. His budding relationship with Maud is tense and uncertain at first, and when she tosses barbs at him, he gives as good as he gets.
This wraps up their part in the larger story pretty neatly, and I doubt we’ll see more of them, but I’m glad we got this at all–I see a lot of other reviewers weren’t happy at the series going off on apparent tangent, but I think this was the best bit yet.
I liked this about the same as the one before it, which is to say, better than the series opener but still not nearly as good as most other IA books in other series.
While I like how this book makes it even clearer that Arland is no longer a romantic prospect for Dina, utterly abolishing the love triangle established in the first book, the main plot is darker even than the second book, and the stakes have yet again been raised, to the point where I question how the series can keep escalating threats while still having Dina and her inn Gertrude Hunt be capable of handling them. This one is such a doozy.
The B-plot of Maud and Helen is actually excellent and I have basically no complaints. Great new characters.
Even if I wasn’t the biggest fan of the main plot, I do like how it ended, and how the romance progressed. I think what I might be struggling with in this series is how minor the romance arc is. Yes, in Kate Daniels it took a while to get going, but once it was established the payoff was huge. In The Edge, the series was comprised of individual romance novels telling a cohesive story together. Hidden Legacy might be the best marriage of worldbuilding and romance I’ve seen in the genre as a whole. So this? This just feels lackluster by comparison. I thought I’d be getting more romance, and it’s just so tame.
Better, and darker, than the first novel, but still not great.
Part of the charm of a world set up like this is that there’s freedom to introduce literally any sort of alien being the author pleases, which is how we get my favorite new character, Orro the oversized hedgehog chef. Much like Caldenia before, he’s a breath of welcome hilarity in the middle of the huge stakes this story sets up.
Some of the other “new” characters actually aren’t new at all–good thing I read The Edge series before this, though it was long enough ago that it took me maybe a few pages too long to recognize the names. I’m torn here between being glad that the younger generation of Edgers have gotten more development, disappointment overall in what that development is (George, you are such an asshole now,) and a mild annoyance that this series even asked me to remember these characters from another property that I haven’t read more than once, and not for a while. Like, at this point I think in sheer number of books Ilona Andrews is probably my most-read author (if it’s not Stephen King, which I suppose it still could be, darn you GR for taking that feature away) so in one sense I’m a super-fan, but in another, I’m not, because I haven’t read any of her books more than once, SINCE THERE ARE SO MANY. I wouldn’t call these obscure characters, but if I hadn’t read their series at all, or I hadn’t read it even semi-recently, then their presence in the story would be full of weird holes.
I think I like Sean better now that he’s a little more world-wise (or should it be universe-wise in this case?) and a little less cocky, but I didn’t love that the war zone he spent time in ran on an artificially fast timeline, in a clear attempt to allow him extra time to “catch up” to Dina in terms of his understanding of the worlds beyond Earth, to give them more equal footing for their romance. It was so obvious that that’s the only reason it was truly necessary for Nexus to run faster than everywhere else.
On the other hand, the fact that Sean needed that extra development at all means he’s clearly endgame for Dina and we got to downgrade Arland to flirty side-man. Which isn’t to say I don’t like Arland, I do, but I don’t like love triangles, so I’m glad that’s basically over.
It’s a better novel than its predecessor, and it’s better enough that I’m going to keep going with the series.
Much, much better than 99 Percent Mine, but not as good as The Hating Game.
After how bad 99 was, I wouldn’t have bothered to read this if I hadn’t already checked it out from the library, and even then I promised myself I was allowed to DNF if it looked like it was going to be another train wreck. But it wasn’t, and I finished it.
It did have many of the same issues with the style of the writing as 99 did, notably moments of disjointed narrative where I had to read the same sentence or paragraph multiple times in order to parse its meaning, because A didn’t clearly flow to B, or a dialogue tag was missing, or some other easily fixable editorial issue. They weren’t as prevalent, so this didn’t feel like such a rush job, but there were still enough to bother me.
As for the actual story, it’s weird, and it’s weird in a way that feels like I personally should like it, while also displaying a sort of hyper-specificity about quirkiness. Every single character in this novel is Quirky ™, so that even while their individual personalities could hardly be more different, they are all also kind of the same. It’s hard to explain–it’s less about the characters themselves than how the author treats them, like they’re all baked from the same recipe that says “three good personality traits, one flaw, and at least two Weird Things that others can’t help but notice.”
Yes, even “normal” people in real life are usually “weird” to someone else in some aspect of their life (odd hobbies or mannerisms, unusual upbringing, etc.) But all that Quirkiness isn’t usually on display at the same time, to everyone, in public.
I genuinely liked Teddy, because he’s a classic Cinnamon Roll (or Teddy Bear, if you prefer, but that was so obvious I groaned at his name.) He’s blithely charming and pretty and sweet-spirited. His One Flaw is that he’s a shiftless mooch, and that’s a big flaw, and a believable one. Early on I despaired that he would mature enough to be a reasonable romantic partner for anyone (let alone Ruthie) but he managed it.
Ruthie…oh, Ruthie. I just didn’t really understand you. Nothing about your backstory made me feel like you would turn out to be the person you are at the start of the story. Who isn’t a bad person, but a bland one. And not bland in the way that allows me the reader to easily self-insert and pretend I’m the heroine Teddy is blatantly trying to win over–no, you’re just bland and timid and boring. Sorry. I wish you hadn’t been.
As a supporting character, Melanie gets points for being snappy and weird while simultaneously doing her best to be a good friend even with her odd judgmental streak. I’m not sure I would want to be friends with her, but she was a fun character.
It’s the Parloni ladies that really have me conflicted, because on the one hand, I figured out their secret long before the reveal and it’s just so cute and sweet. On the other hand, they are the most outrageously inappropriate and Beyond Quirky old ladies who do really questionable things throughout the story that made it difficult to like them in the moment, no matter that I liked their overall arc.
I finally got around to giving this author a try and exhausted her current catalog in a week, but nothing even came close to her first novel, so in the future, I’m going to give whatever else comes along a pass.
Because I really enjoyed The Hating Game and Thorne’s other novels were sitting right there on Hoopla while I had borrows available, I went ahead and binged, grabbing them both and reading this one next.
Sadly, this is a massive disappointment. The quality simply isn’t there–underdeveloped characters, skimpy plot, nonsensical relationships, disjointed narrative that doesn’t always make clear who is speaking or how one action bridges to the next. (Seriously, there are some really confusing and amateur mistakes in here that I can’t believe made it past an editor.)
I’m here for the childhood-friend trope, but I was never clear on what the conflict of them being in a relationship was supposed to be, because there were too many to choose from, and they didn’t all mesh well. Tom and Darcy can’t be together because: a) she’s an impulsive commitment-phobe who travels at the drop of a hat; b) her twin brother has basically forbidden it because he doesn’t want the additional complication, and/or he thinks Darcy is a loser who doesn’t deserve Tom; c) she spends a good chunk of the story believing he’s in a committed relationship with someone else, but he’s not and doesn’t tell her for longer than was probably a good idea; d) she’s put him on a weird pedestal in her mind and created an image of him as the perfect man and protector, but that’s not real and he can’t live up to it; e) Darcy is also Tom’s boss, in the sense that it’s her shared inherited house that he’s in charge of renovating, but also kind of his employee, in that she insists on working on the reno with him, and that muddies the waters considerably.
That’s five things. Pick one. Or maybe two. And then make those work, instead of simply piling on more complications like layers of paint.
I also don’t understand the relationship between Darcy and her twin. Jamie spends most of the story as a menacing off-page presence who is mad at Darcy and but still best friends with Tom, despite also being his boss on the renovation. Darcy is jealous and doesn’t feel like she’s ever been allowed to be as close to Tom as she wanted to be (hence the title, because Tom started off as “one percent mine.”) I really thought for most of the book that the twins did not have a good relationship, and that Tom had been suffering all this time as the bone these two were fighting like dogs over; but then at the end, after a single explosive fight, all’s forgiven and everybody’s cool again. The “get Tom back” phase at the end is a rushed-through explanation of how the twins have been working on bettering themselves and their relationship, and it just rings so false.
Tom is bland. He’s nice, and he’s muscular (Thorne really seems to like heroes with Big Muscles, but I only have two data points for this so far,) and the only real thing we find out about him is that he’s determined to make his business succeed while also being terrified it’s going to fail. Which is all fine, that’s a solid basis for a character, but it never goes farther than that, because if you couldn’t tell from my dissection of the relationship conflicts and my confusion about the twins, this story is leaning heavily on being about Darcy and Darcy’s problems, so there just isn’t room to elaborate on Tom’s inner life.
Darcy and Tom ultimately don’t feel like a good couple to me. I wasn’t expecting their banter to be as pointed and witty as anything from The Hating Game, because this is a different story with a different premise, but I was expecting a similar level of overall quality (or at least something approaching it, not every sophomore release is going to be as good as a stellar first novel.) This doesn’t even feel like it was written by the same author.
Enemies-to-lovers sometimes falls flat with me when the war is either too vicious, or not vicious enough. They’re not really enemies if the barbs thrown couldn’t be hurtful, but too hurtful doesn’t leave a lot of plausibility for forgiveness, let alone love.
I don’t love everything about this story, but I do think it hit the right balance with its level of conflict. By framing the leads’ dislike of each other as a game, one they’re both shown to play vigorously and enjoy immensely, it leaves the door open for their relationship to change.
And since I’m a total sucker for guys who are stoic or even cold on the outside but charmingly vulnerable teddy bears underneath, I liked Josh quite a lot, even when he was saying things that, in other situations, I would find unattractive. Again, because it’s a game, and also because Lucy is being just as awful, Josh’s meanness doesn’t disqualify him as a good romantic hero, to me.
I finally got around to reading this when the giveaway for the movie tie-in edition popped up in my feed–I’d been meaning to get this from the library for ages and never quite getting to it. For all the romances I read, I generally don’t actually watch rom-coms, but if the movie doesn’t mess with the quality of banter in this story, I think it’s definitely got potential and I might even watch it someday.
When unsent emails literally became the most beautiful, romantic thing in the world! Y’ALL, I AM STILL SWOONING!
Anytime Sadia rocked her sexuality & her love of sex; BROWN CHUBBY GIRLS OWNING THEIR BODIES IS MY FAV!
Every scene wherein found family is just as important as blood family - and the fact that blood family ain’t always healthy family.
Favorite Character:
Our gal Sadia, FO’ SURE! For one, I connected with her an ass-ton more. For another, I adored everything she was and everything she represented.
This woman dealt with emotional & mental health issues, both of which were a big part of her character and her character arc. My ass loved Sadia all the more for it.
How smexy was the smex?
A strange mix of super-duper sexy dialogue…annnnd foreplay/post-coital moments set to light-speed.
The hot? Sadia demanding Jackson, and I quote, “Get on your knees and lick me.” [swooooon!]
The not? The fact that I literally can’t remember anything else about their sexy times. The scenes felt short, forgettable, and pretty vanilla.
Whose Line Is It Anyway:
Sadia:What about us? What do you want from me? Jackson:I don’t want anything from you. My dream is for you to let me love you. And maybe, someday, you can love me back. You don’t have to love me a lot. A little love is enough.
“You don’t just decide to love and suddenly everything is fine. Love takes practice. Love isn’t passive, it’s active. A verb.” - Grandpa
Sadia: Why were you involved in the protest? Jackson:Because it was wrong. Sadia:That’s not even your country, though. Jackson: Principles don’t have borders.
Got any bitching to do?
Sadly…a lot. The plot tension just didn’t work for me, even though “She’s My Dead Bro’s Wife Who I’ve Loved Forever” IS ALL MY CATNIP!
Problem was, Jackson struggles sooOooOOOo much with accessing his emotions that he feels shut off, even from the reader.
Plus our hero’s ENTIRE conflict is that Sadia’s off-limits because she was his bro’s wife. Yet when gal tells him they were unhappily married, with divorce on the horizon, WE GET NO REACTION! They bang, there’s a time jump, & we skip right over the OTP learning each other’s bodies & developing intimacy; both physical and emotional intimacy.
So, alas, grumpy fangirl is grumpy.
Visually Depict Yo Book Feels:
Famous last words:
That panda hiding his head in shame is legit me in my book feels.
Because the characters were lovable! The family dynamics were beautiful! Hell, the heroine was a brown girl from a Muslim background who also beautifully own her sexuality!
There’s a lot to love in the book, and it doesn’t bore…it just didn’t grab me like I expected it to.
I’m back with another Mary Balogh romance novel! So let’s get right into my thoughts, feelings, and rambles on…
As a young man, Justin Wiley was banished by his father for mysterious reasons, but now his father is dead, and Justin has been Earl of Brandon for six years. A dark, dour man, he nonetheless takes it as his responsibility to care for his half-sister Maria when her mother dies. He travels to her home to fetch her back to the family seat at Everleigh Park.
Although she adored him once, Maria now loathes Justin, and her friend Lady Estelle Lamarr can see immediately how his very name upsets her. When Justin arrives and invites Estelle and her brother to accompany Maria to Everleigh Park to help with her distress, she begrudgingly agrees for Maria’s sake.
As family secrets unravel in Maria’s homecoming, Justin, too, uncovers his desire for a countess. And, while he may believe he’s found an obvious candidate in the beautiful 25-year-old Lady Estelle, she is most certain that they could never make a match…
This novel started out fairly strong. I was enjoying the set up of the story, what with a sort of enemies to lovers plotline, a mysterious family secret, and a country house party, there was lots to sink my teeth into.
I’m not sure what happened within the last few chapters of the book though, because I found that it was dragging on terribly for me. I’m not sure if Balogh is just tired of this series or what, and I couldn’t blame her, considering there are nine books in total! I don’t know, it just seemed that once the family mystery was revealed, and a certain missing character was found, the plot could only go forward to a wedding. This is fine, though. I’m used to this in romance novels, but it was as if the announcements and the planning and the wedding went on for those final few chapters. I don’t think it helps that Balogh insists on listing off every single family member, and for both parties in this book! Not only that, but she lists how they are related to one another, or not related to one another. It got incredibly repetitive after awhile, and it did feel like she did it more often in this book than she has in the others.
In the beginning, I found myself hoping that maybe Bertrand, the twin, would get his own book too. But now… well I’d say this is a fine enough send off for the Westcotts. Even the blurb in the back of this book seems to be promoting her next new series entirely, so I’d say Balogh seems to be finished with the Westcotts too.
All in all, I didn’t hate this novel. It was enjoyable enough, and while Estelle may have found her someone perfect, or rather, someone who was perfect for her, unfortunately I can’t say the same about this novel for me.
Happy Pride Month! We want to thank you all for being part of FictIf. No matter how you choose to identify yourself, and who you choose to love, you are all loved in this community.
He may look like a kindly gent, but this villain hides his true identity behind lies and falsehoods. Can you work out his true intentions before it’s too late?
I was super lucky to get to do a print + sticker sheet for the release of THE HEART PRINCIPLE by Helen Hoang- one of my most anticipated reads this year! You’ll get both these items when you order ANY Helen Hoang book from The Ripped Bodice bookstore Today is the last day though so jump on that if you’re keen!
Saw someone say this this morning. And if that isn’t the best reason to enjoy romance novels, then I don’t know what is.
(And before anyone starts in with any condescending derision, lemme ask you the last detective novel you read where the detective didn’t ‘win’ by solving the case. I’ll wait…)
It’s INSANE to me how controversial romance novels are. Romance novels. Like, being openly a fan of them immediately opens you up to people constantly coming at you like “but don’t you think it’s ~limiting- and ~juvenile~ to have a genre of books with happy endings for women?”
Like.
No?
Why is it such a big deal to want to read stories where women have sex and then don’t die at the end? Jesus Christ.
Why is the concept of female characters being happy seen as less creative than female characters suffering? (Trust me, creating a world where women win in the end takes a lot more creativity and artistic vision lmfao)
Anyway, literary bros will pry my romance novels with their happy endings from my cold dead fingers.
Or die in the very beginning of the book. But no one calls out James Patterson for writing another formulaic thriller in which a woman is horrifically killed after getting laid and then some man solves her murder. Every. Damn. Time.
But hey, those romance novels where women get happy endings are so limiting, eh?
This whole Bridgerton series thing has got me thinking, like a lot. What if the series blows up more than anyone was expecting? What if this opens the doors for other romance novels to get adapted into streaming service series?! Could you imagine the wallflowers being a series too?! I could scream just thinking about it.
All of this rambling begs the question: What romance novel, whether it be a series, historical or contemporary, would you like to see adapted into a live action series?
A sports romance series, preferably hockey. I’m not too picky about which one though. I just wish there were some good sports romance TV shows out there! There are shows with sports and shows with romance, but the two rarely intersect.
I mean, look at this photo manip that @spartanguard did for my book! Don’t you want to see that on TV?
Insisting on happy endings isn’t about denying innovation. The genre innovates and grows constantly.
But the happy ending is a tenant of the genre and has been since the beginning. It’s not some tired trope that can be inverted or subverted. It’s a fundamental facet of the genre. Like the magic in fantasy, or advanced technology in sci-fi. There are just somethings that are the hallmarks of a genre. For the romance one of those hallmarks is the happy ending.
If I doesn’t end happily it just isn’t a romance novel.
What’s more, calling the addition of sad endings to the genre “innovation” smacks of the criticism romance too often recieves for being “unrealistic” or “too optimistic”. Our novels are considered to be less valuable, and are disdained as useless fluff or trash because we don’t embrace the way “things really are”. They’re dismissed as silly love stories that supposedly distort our perceptions of reality. Don’t we know that things just don’t work out like that in really life?
Yeah. We do. But what they don’t understand is that forcing unhappy or tragic endings into a genre that is devoted to optimism and hope is anathema to romance readers and writers. There’s enough of that kind of “reality” in other genres. That’s not why we read romances.
So this isn’t about stalling out the genre’s growth. It evolves every year.
This is about what makes a romance. Which is not defined by some arbitrary set of rules we just make up exexclude people from our sandbox. What makes a romance has been defined by the desires and expectations of generations of readers and writers.
Getting writers to understand that is for their own good as well. Because if you market a tragedy as a romance because you want to “innovate” the genre? All its going to get you is bad reviews, angry readers, and poor sales.
One of the problems with this perception of how happy endings are somehow limiting for romance novels is that it so often comes from people who don’t read them. So there’s this failure to see that innovation within romance is about how you get your characters to their unique happy endings. The rules provide the innovation. “How do you innovate within this structure” is a much harder challenge than “do whatever you want,” especially when the “do whatever you want” side of things is the culturally approved one that is “good” and “literary.”
And of course, it’s not like love stories that end sadly or without that emotional satisfaction cannot be published. Me Before You was a runaway bestseller and a successful movie. So was The Fault in Our Stars. Love stories that end sadly are published frequently. They just aren’t romance novels.
Not to mention the inherent misogyny in thinking that women’s happiness is somehow less mature or enlightened than women’s suffering.
Happy ending for women —> tragic ending for women isn’t progress.
Women’s suffering isn’t innovative. It’s the status quo.
Why does it have to be a tragedy for it to be “innovation”? There’s lots of other ways you can innovate that don’t have to be that. I’ve read enough bad romance novels to know what could be fixed (first on my list is “less rape culture,” followed by “more dominant women” and “more POC and LGBTQ folks”). Having a happy ending isn’t a flaw.
Does the “happy ending” HAVE to involve the couple in the book getting together? Or can they just all be… happy? A depressing ending to a “romance” novel would make it into more of a drama/horror story to me.
It has to end with the characters together. They don’t have to be married, you can have an HFN - Happy For Now - where the idea is that they’re happy together at the end but hey life is a mystery, it may not be forever.
But yes, they do have to be together at the end of the book.
You solve the crime at the end of a crime book. You solve the mystery at the end of a mystery. You have a romance at the end of a romance. Honestly? That’s all that needs to be said about genre conventions.
Exactly! No one asks James Patterson why he has the detective solve the murder by the end of the book. So why is it OK for a thriller writer to write within the confines of a thriller but it’s not OK for a romance writer to write within the confines of a romance?
Although James Patterson is a man and most of his fanbase is men, where as romance writers are usually women writing for women readers so…. maybe that’s the answer to my question. :\
