His Curvy Rejected Mate

While as a whole the story was decent, I needed more grovelling for how poorly Alec treated Flora during the “secret hookup in the woods and school” era. He never really explains or apologizes.

And Flora; just kind of accepts it as is?

While I liked that she was plus size, and kind of handled the bullies and tormentors in her own way; and yes Alec always saw her as soft and pretty, he doesn’t make sense to me.

I felt like there was something missing from this book that's present in the others of the series, I couldn't quite put my finger on it but I definitely noticed it. Maybe it's because Flora and Alec's story was shorter.

I did enjoy it though I found it to be less dramatic than the others, I was expecting more angst but things were resolved pretty quickly. I liked Flora and Alec, I'm bummed out that we didn't get to see more from them.

I can't help but feel this one isn't as memorable as the others though, I didn't hate nor love it and to be honest I even feel a little underwhelmed by it which is a real shame because this is one of my favourite series and I've been looking forward to the 4th instalment for awhile.

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