A Matter of Disagreement

This was a cute rivals-to-lovers romance and I quite enjoyed the worldbuilding — it dives right in and trusts the reader to gather what’s going on in the academic discussions, and I liked seeing the worldbuilding unfold that way. I’ve read E.E. Ottoman’s work before and I can definitely tell this is one of his earlier ones (and there are a few copy editing errors if you’re sensitive to that), but the concept was fun, and it has the same warmth of the historical romances of his I’ve read. Andrea and Geoffrey were fun to get to know, and this made a great quick read on Trans Visibility Day.

Really glad I got this from the library and didn't pay for it - the story was fine enough, though it could've benefited from being longer, I think, as it was well under 100 pages and I didn't feel like the world-building was all that well explained. The bigger issue, though, was the editing. I try not to be a dick about an occasional typo or grammar issue, especially in self-published works, but this was verging on incomprehensible at some points. It seemed to get worse as the story went on, or maybe I just noticed it more, but this really felt like reading a rough draft. An interesting idea and setting, but needed a lot of fleshing out and definitely a hard edit. Three stars for the premise but that's honestly generous, unfortunately.

(2022 Summer Romance Bingo: steampunk. Would also work for mistaken identity, made-up country, or work rivals.)

Cute. That's really the only thing I have to say about this story. Well, that and I wish it had been a bit longer (maybe by about a hundred pages) because to totally think that Andrea and Gregory could have carried it without a problem. It was also nice to see that this world, while definitely reading as historical, has a much more progressive view towards transgender and gay people than we do even now. (Nice, but kind of depressing.) Anyway, the characters are cute together and the story was nice and I liked it.