Donna Smith

This review contains spoilers.
What to say? I want to recommend Katherine Center to you, but any other title than this. (I really, really liked “Things you Save in a Fire”–start there.) I guess my childhood sense of being overwhelmed by embarrassment when I or others mess up in social situations and get people's names and identities wrong is still part of my psyche. This well of shame meant I couldn't relax into this as a cute romance with a fascinating neurological condition but rather kept tensing for the inevitable errors that face blindness creates. I do appreciate the research Center puts into finding unusual, believable human circumstances that provide welcome twists on familiar tropes in romance and women's fiction. But–I could not finish. I feel too much the second-hand embarrassment! Not something authors think to issue content warnings about, right?!

Eh...don't bother with this one. But--DO READ other Camilla Evergreen books! The main characters here seemed flat and unrealistic, with problems that I wasn't feeling and solutions that didn't quite get there. HOWEVER, I have found others of her books to be UTTERLY delightful, especially How to Find Love if you are Weird.

Sweet and clever gender inversions in a dozen ways that mostly didn't feel modern or contrived but smart, interesting, contributing to character conflict and growth.

I shall track down more in this series.

I thought it was the first by this author I've read, then I dug deeper and found a DNF in another series which I quit because of flat characters and the utter unrealism of a modern author writing about subsistence skills like hauling water, lighting oil lamps, cooking on wood... Apparently none of that unpalatable-to-me vibe was present in Snapdragons to make me twitch, so--different domain? More author skills since Ashes on the Moor? Either way, I'll read more in this series and see what this author can do.

I like this author! The second by her I've read.

Complex and interesting, and there was actually a moment where I didn't know which trope was going to be engaged and who the romantic lead would actually be--because Evergreen is witty and skillful at acknowledging ALL the tropes in the genre and playing fast and loose with them in the most engaging ways.

Clever! Interesting. Very cool character arcs, and--as with all in this series--very deft juggling tropes and expectations with more than a few winks to the audience of the genre.

I'm sticking with this author.