Miltantly Romantic

I had an intense debate with myself over whether I was going to review this book.  I have followed the author on social media, she's extremely sweet, she's a WOC, publishes independently, works a day job, and small authors depend so much on positive word of mouth.  She's someone I want to support as a person.  However, as discussed in-depth in this highly recommended episode of the Smart Bitches podcast, if readers in a genre aren't willing to honestly review the genre, it makes it extremely hard for other people to come into the genre.  This is made worse for under-reviewed genres like romance, where, for example, the NYT reviews MAYBE twenty a year, usually four to five at a time, and the reviewer is Olivia Waite, a romance writer herself, who is thereby under pressure to constantly represent the best of the genre.

That is to say: if readers of romance aren't willing to admit that there are not-great or even bad romances out there (and there are plenty), there's nowhere for newbies to turn to and get trustworthy information, which in turn, makes it a pretty big gamble to even bother with a genre nobody is rooting for in the first place.

Given all this, here I am, reviewing this book.

Let me say that I did find some positives about this book.  The heroine is plus-sized, and I didn't feel that was fetishized by the male lead, just appreciated.  There's a woman character who has an interesting background and could have made for a very intriguing lead later on.  There are family dynamics that I find enjoyable in the abstract.

There are basically three main problems with this book, and those problems are...significant.

1.  The writing is highly simplistic.  And while that can be a style choice, if it is, it does not work, here.  The dialogue often either falls flat or just plain is not something one human would say to another.  The descriptions can feel either trite or uncomfortable.  The literal language that guides the narrative doesn't flow the way it needs to.

2.  The exterior obstacles often do not make sense.  It's not that you can't understand what's happening.  It's that it wouldn't happen.  I am NOT (as anyone who reads this blog or has, you know, ever had a convo with me about this knows) a stickler for "historical accuracy".  I could indeed, give less than negative two fucks.  That said, if the premise upon which certain actions rest are so inconceivable in terms of the way British society at that time worked, that's a problem for me.  I need to have a mere patina of believability re: what people might have done/thought/etc, but I do need that patina.  And it's not here.

3.  The characters and their actions are never properly fleshed out.  For instance, the heroine is an eighteen year-old (possibly nineteen, I think they waited a year), making her debut.  Hero is known as the Bachelor Duke because at the ripe age of thirty he hasn't settled down.  Let's put aside that that wouldn't have been terribly remarkable and pretend it would have been.  It takes about fifteen seconds for BD to fall in strong lust/have serious interest in the heroine.  But like...has this guy never met an attractive woman before?  I truly read the whole book and I had no idea what it was about this 18/19 year-old chick that was healing this guy's trauma-based marriage-aversity.  My best guess is she had really great breasts.  No, I am not kidding.

All of those are enough that the book wouldn't work for me, and until about the last thirty pages I was mostly just feeling like the whole thing was a bit unfortunate.  Then we get to those thirty pages.  There are two "villains" throughout this book.  I put that in quotes because they're not really around much, they show up when needed for plot and both of them are driven by greed and just being bad people.  While I do not deny that there are bad people in the world, the one-note level of these two is somewhat egregious.

In any case, said villains decide, for Reasons, to burn down the house--in London--that the heroine and the female character I felt had the most promise in terms of backstory, along with said female character's young child, are all in.  Miraculously, the heroine and the child make it out, and no other houses are burnt, which, if you know literally anything about how fire worked in Regency London is, ah, not possible, I shall say lightly.  The other woman dies--seemingly silently, not even going to talk about how that's not a thing when one is caught in a burning house--and the heroine and BD are married two days later.

That's not an exaggeration.  Nevermind that the woman was the half-sister of BD's bestie, who's having a bit of a rough time.  Nobody seems to consider maybe, you know, pushing back the wedding.  It's like "aw, sad.  Welp, let's get married and bang!" 

To say that I was wigged by the wrap up would be something of an understatement.  

She has the second in the series out now.  I honestly wish her the absolute best of luck, but that's going to be a hard no for me.