Roisin

This was a lovely book. I expected slightly more, though maybe I shouldn't have, because the book was not quite as dense as the books it was marketed to be like. Both Pride and Prejudice and Howl's Moving Castle are more elaborate in plot, character, vocabulary, and events! But I'm not here just to praise the books I love.

Though Half A Soul is not as elaborate or compelling as those, the book does something that I haven't seen any other Regency era romance do; which is to go beyond the balls and the season and the dances, and focus on the working class. That was such a fresh take that I enjoyed this book all the more for it. There could have been more... shenanigans, though! I would have believed the romance and the affections more if we saw more interactions but this is a fairly short novel so it isn't that surprising.

Overall, I feel like lately novels have been getting so much more spare in substance. This isn't the first novel from 2020s I'm reading that feels vaguely devoid of build up. I'm beginning to think this is the publisher's fault. I guess everyone just wants a tiktok summary these days, rather than a wordy book.

So while Heated Rivalry had less of a consistent plot and was mostly made up of snapshots of the protagonists' meetings through the years and really only got into having a proper plot in the last 30/40% of the book, The Long Game is much more plot-driven with the characters each having clear growth arcs and struggles and side characters who are fleshed out. This was less about the sex (though there was plenty of steamy scenes in it) than the previous book, what with Shane and Ilya already being in a loving and stable relationship. So for someone like me who isn't necessarily a fan of excessive spice and prefers a more cohesive plot-driven story, this should have been the obvious favorite and I will admit, it was better written than the previous book...but I think I actually prefer Heated Rivalry? There is an anxiety in the narrative of this book that made me not so eager to read this. So to compare the two, I finished Heated Rivalry in 24 hours but had to take long break while reading The Long game and so it took me much longer to finish the book. There is something about the unconventional story of rivals falling for each other and doing everything secretly that made Heated Rivalry so compelling. So even though I wasn't crazy about the format, I liked that book better.

The Long Game still felt like a reward, a consolation prize to see Ilya and Shane be loved and happy and finally end up where they belong and that was so cozy and sweet and by the end of the book I was giddy with happiness. I think it's worth a read. For Hollanov's sake, if nothing else!

I can't review Hunger Games books. I can only sob and gesture vaguely around me.

If you want to know what it's like, read it, like you should.

Horrifying. Absolute all-fire despair.

Why did I read this?! How did I read this?!
This was...utterly bad! And yet, I read all one thousand pages of nonsense, so who's the real clown here?!
Let me get this straight (pun NOT intended), this book is weird. As in, I am half-convinced that a cat in heat wrote this! I'm not even gonna touch on the problematic aspects. Even at its most nonproblematic, this book lacks a basic understanding of how humans function, both socially and anatomically. Seriously! I had so many moments when I would pause reading and just stare into the middle distance, as if waiting for someone to materialise out of thin air and confirm my confusion at the ludicrousness of what I had just read! A character jumps out of the fourth floor and lands on his feet?! The snakes open doors?! The sex barely makes sense, like these guys should be in a hospital, I am worried for their physical well-being. It's just so weird.
I don't recommend this book to anyone, honestly. Only read it if you have a morbid curiosity to see why everyone says this is bad.
I will admit, it had its moments. But for the most part, this felt like a book written about gay men for the straight male gaze! I think it just feeds into a very testosterone-filled idea of physical over emotional relationship. And...okay I can't say that because there are emotions and the characters think a lot about how much they love each other but they rarely if ever say it out loud. And that seems like such an annoyingly guy thing to me. Why would a woman write men like this?! We can't even trust a woman to write a proper man, anymore?! There was hardly any emotions there. The sex is weird and wild in a very unrealistic way, the men are all so macho and unwilling to show proper emotions...it's like who was supposed to enjoy this?! There's very little emotional communication in the book and that is the most frustrating edging it puts the reader through. Because the main couple actually work so well together but they hardly ever talk to each other like mature people and that's so frustrating. So whenever they express the bare minimum of emotions or show any softness towards each other, I was eating it up like a starving man. Those moments are rare, however, and you really have to work through the rest of this book to get to them. For the most part, the sex scenes, which I believe are supposed to be the main attraction point of this book, are bland or mechanical. They get wild, but without a proper emotional anchor, they don't mean much. This gets better slightly as the book progresses. Some of the scenes work, but there's also such an uncalled-for violence in many of these scenes that they end up ruining the mood, anyway.
I would say this: the inherent illogicality of this book aside, the scheming is actually top-notch! These are 100% diabolical people who properly screw people over with 3D chess mindgames and gambles, and it kind of makes sense in that odd way that things make sense in nonsensical situations...you know?!
So this was not good. Not really. But it had its moments. Don't read it. Just watch the show instead...and know that every illogical thing from the show is directly the book's fault!