Meet Me in Madrid

DNF @ 110 pages in, didn't feel any chemistry between the leads.

Interesting FF Romance Brought Down By Preachy Politics And Blatant Racism. As a romance, this book works. It starts out as a “forced” (ish) proximity before turning into a bridge-the-gap, all revolving around two female academics at different points in their careers. Not for the “clean” / “sweet” crowd, as others have noted there is a fair amount of sex in the first four chapters alone. Also falls into the trap of describing both women as very buxom, which is a bit of a cop-out to my mind designed to get those of us with... “active imaginations”... more into the book. But that point is but a minor quibble. The preachy politics, and in particular the blatant racism, is the reason for the star deduction here. Let me be perfectly clear. My standard is this: If you reverse the [insert demographic in question] and keep everything else absolutely identical, would anyone cry foul? I believe this book fails that test in its characterization of its singular straight white male character, and thus the star deduction. But still, on the whole this is a mostly solid book, and thus it is only a singular star deducted. Fans of the romance genre generally should enjoy this one, fans of FF romances in particular will probably thoroughly enjoy this one, and it does indeed dive into areas not frequented, particularly academia and art professors. Thus, this book is recommended.

This is the second teal-covered age gap lesbian romance about history professionals that I've read this year and unfortunately, this one disappointed me too. Most of the parts about their actual professional lives were interesting (there's something at Charlotte's job that wraps up a little too neatly but I did find myself wanting to read more about the nuns, and the academic conference felt depressingly accurate) but the romance and writing style did not work for me.

It was hard to keep track of how long things took to happen, but considering that this started out as an intentional one-night stand the actual relationship felt like it came out of nowhere, way too fast. The sex scenes felt perfunctory and mechanical. The characters' voices felt very same-y (they allegedly had quirks but it seemed like a lot of times the author forgot about them) and they used really awkward phrasing I can't imagine anyone actually using out loud. Why say “POC professors” when “professors of colour” is right there?

Adrianna was fine, though I don't feel like we learned much about her. I hated the choice she made at the end and the reasoning behind it, but that's more the fault of the author than the character. Charlotte felt VERY young for a character who was supposed to be in her 30s. She was so needy and insecure and a lot of her choices made no sense to me. She's really cruel about another woman for no reason and never really walks that back even after it's explained what that woman is going through. I liked Esther a lot but her character got boring toward the end when she really started crossing ethical lines.

I feel like the author had some good intentions here but I can't recommend this book.