Hey everyone. Seeing as I’m closing down my other blog and transmuting this one into a messy home blog for everything that goes through my brain – BEHOLD! A book review!
This book review was requested by the author, but unfortunately they didn’t pay me a zillion cash to say nice things, so I’ll just say the truth. For those of you who like videos, Here’s my video version of this review!
This book did NOT captivate me at first. Nope. Not at all. It was painfully heteronormative in all the ways that hetero people don’t realize they’re being SO hetero. This was reflected in both their couple dynamics (guy chases girl who pretends not to be interested) and in their characters (girl is a yogi, a nurse and soon to be midwife, vegetarian, guy does rowing, is a doctor, and eats meat). Uhhh, barf. I wanted to throw this book at the wall.
To be honest, the doctor vs nurse gender thing is so old and used. I’ve been treated by an almost equal number of female doctors and psychiatrists as I have male ones, so even if there is a statistical slant, I don’t think it’s worthy of making the character job choices about. Second, really? Why is it the woman with the lesser education, the more ‘holistic’ and ‘intuitive’ job? It just, again, made me want to throw the book at the wall.
Again. SO HETERO it ached.
Also, their flirting dynamics really just sounded like ick to me. It went like this ‘oh, me urk urk guy. me like you’. “Oh, me sassy sassy gal. oh me so hot in my pants but oh, me won’t talk’.
Now, this ‘cat and mouse’ thing where the girl keeps saying no and the guy keeps insisting is way too close to rape culture for me. Sure, everything in this novel was consensual, but what about people taking a ‘no’ for a ‘no’ and just leaving someone the fuck alone and moving on with life? I’ve done that, and look -> happily married!
Now all that is about the beginning of the book. I’d say about halfway through, the cat and mouse dynamics drop off as they become a couple and some actually healthy dynamics kind of start. That’s nice. I liked that a lot.
One thing I also liked was how the two protagonists reacted differently to unsaid things, in ways that made sense for their stereotypical gender conformity. Typical hetero women leave things unsaid to protect themselves from the macho men’s outbursts (seen this a lot IRL) and that’s kind of what happened in the book. Meanwhile, typical hetero men think silence is an a+ sign (really dumb) and that’s again what happened in the book. But I liked this, because it shows the flaws of not communicating, added tension, and was realistic towards the characters she’d created.
The ending was cheesy, sweet, and ended on a nice note. Nothing to be said there except again, typical hetero notion of a cheesy ending.
So what is there to be said about the book as a whole? Really, if you’re looking for a staple hetero cheesy novel, this is what you’re looking for. It avoided lots of what we would call ‘indie’ mistakes, such as bad dialogue and nonsensical story turns. It reads pretty much as well if not better than some published Harlequin novels I’ve read. And honestly, the sweet part of the novels really do redeem it. When the story is good, it’s good, but the crappy parts aren’t too bad if you’re not a gender-obsessed person like me. A hetero non-queer person might really like it.
Overall, a pretty good book! Here’s the goodreads page so you can grab a copy!
Unhinged and unenlightened 