Shy
I fell in love with this book at
Bo: “Win, is that short for something”
Win: “Winnifred...What about you, are you tall for something”
I died. It was a dad joke so good I was immediately depressed that I hadn't invented it myself.
But in all seriousness Bo is the sweetest. Thats my review.
Idk if I'm just getting old or whatever, but I'm kinda over “lukewarm” asshole heroes. You know the type of guys that are douchey in like ~ n o r m a l ~ ways? Like they're almost so real that they remind me of people that could possibly/actually do exist? And then I get angry?
It might also just be a phase, but right now I either want depravity à la the Samantha Rue and Angel Lawson Forsyth Royals series, or an absolute sugar cube like Bo <3 Or like, just a dude who is well adjusted (possibly goes to therapy) enough to recognize his own emotional state.
It's a hard nah for me folks.
I love Elizabeth O'Roark's writing! Waking Olivia is an all time favorite for me, and I absolutely adored the Devil series! Her writing here was still impeccable, compelling, and tear inducing (especially Lucie's pov) but the characters were just...not it at all.
Ok I LOVED Lucie. I'm a sucker for a FMC who has had so much shit thrown at her but continues to be kind, compassionate, and face challenges head on, one step at a time. Also my heart genuinely aches for my low self esteem fictional babes. (Also Sophie, Henry, and Molly were just the freaking best.)
But man Caleb sucked, The law of romance plot physics was broken. For every shitty thoughtless thing he did, there was not an equal and opposite wonderful moment. Like the circumstances around why he was the way he was, and how Lucie's unrequited love went on for so long made logical sense, but I didn't feel like she got a quarter of what she put into the relationship back out of it.
Also, I am just SO NOT INTERESTED in Kate and Beck's story. Like I honestly couldn't care less about what happens to these two (especially after reading the teaser). It seems to me like whole series is about morally gray main characters and while I'm here for the concept in theory, I'm so far really not feeling it.
I'll update/rate this when I'm fully done but I'm more than half way now and here is my thing with Cate C. Wells.
Her heroines? Phenomenal. Like superb. Their struggles make me sob, I rejoice when they find their inner strength and when they come to appreciate their good qualities and respect themselves. Like seriously I haven't really found heroines that I empathize so deeply as hers.
Her heroes? Garbage. Complete shit humans. “Meh” at best, but in this series, specifically, usually irredeemable.
Like it makes me so mad, because I would read an entire book about Flora, or Una, or Dina from Heavy (Heavy himself is my fav of her heroes, but thats not saying a lot, so moving on), No romance needed. I just love their stories and their journeys of introspection and ultimately, of self acceptance. Like I honestly feel like its a disservice to these incredible, strong women that she writes to have them settle for shit for brains dudes who couldn't navigate their own (or anyone else's) feelings with a compass, and turn into whiny bitches the second that things don't go their way and they can't figure out how to “make things right” because they were so shitty to begin with that they really can't “make things right.”
TL;DR these books shouldn't be romances, I just wanna read Cate C. Wells books about awesome heroines who defy societal expectations and their life journeys. Or, or orrrrrrr! Give them men who are worthy of the herculean efforts they go through just to exist. K thanks bye.
UPDATE: I still feel the same way lol. All my stars go to Flora, Alec gets noooonneeeee~~~
So like toward the end I almost had to bite my tongue. Alec started to make me feel like he was doing something. And no it wasn't the "You were the only thing that was mine, my secret special thing" or whatever, that was garbage. What almost won me over was actually how flora would say Alec would be eating, and she thought he wasn't paying attention but he was listening the whole time. Planning to fix things she would complain about and stuff. That was just so domestic. It reminded me of a 70 year old couple with a gruff grandpa who doesn't outwardly show affection but loves and dotes on his wife the only way he knows how.
So it almost got me. But it didn't, cause then I remembered that he had been treating her like shit since high school
