The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

DNF @ 35%.

Trying a new genre! That is: romance!! Look at that cover, wow.

I mean, I'm not completely new to romance - I spent most of the time between puberty and college reading and writing fairly torrid fanfic (oh, Boromir, my love! and not forgetting you, Obi-Wan). So I thought I'd give this a go. This was a recommendation from Claude.ai, aka my new fave recommendation system. He sold it to me as a fanfic-esque costume drama featuring a sexy hero who has autism. HA. Yes. I went looking for smut as a vehicle for neurodiversity lit (neurodiversity is my JAM, right now; THANK YOU to all those disability advocates out there).

Anyway, I simply could not suspend my disbelief. Just as several friends have failed me in the past, when I'd show them some treasure of a Hindi film (aka Bollywood), because they just could not get past the “breaking out into song”, I could not get past the incredible horniness of the people in this book. They just met!!! Hahaha. Also, I wasn't loving some of the window dressing around this smut + neurodiversity story - namely, the dead prostitutes, the random proposal by that random guy, the SECOND random proposal, the way that every single person was described by their eyes and their vivid color, the wandering point of view (I guess it's omniscient but ugh, I drew the line at that even in my fanfic reading).

Ah well. I remain undeterred! Expect more romance in my Goodreads in the future!