Ricky
I came close to giving this one star, to be honest, but I don't know, I might have just hated the audiobook narration. It felt really inert to me compared to the other books. Initially my plan was just to read Heated Rivalry and The Long Game, but when I started the latter, I noticed there were a lot of references to characters and events from other books in the series. Thus I decided to read them all. These characters never came alive for me and their chemistry never felt real to me. The dialogue never felt like real people talking. It all leaned too far along the scale of wish-fulfillment-written-by-and-for-women for me to connect to. I also hated the big obligatory final conflict in this book. It felt really stupid to me. I mean they always feel stupid, but this one felt especially stupid. part of me wants to make this a spoiler review so that I can talk about why I think the relationship dynamics at the heart of this conflict are toxic, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Actually though, one of the ways these books are so nakedly wish fulfillment by and for women is that there's almost always one of the characters who is female coded and this character is usually unreasonable and demanding and somehow the Hulkish other guy is almost idealistically perfect but somehow is always the one apologizing. The balance is a little bit better in this book in that way, but it is a dynamic that makes me roll my eyes. although speaking of Hulk, this book feels like it could have been modified from Incredible Hulk fanfiction.
It's too bad because I'm always wanting to read romance novels where one or more of the characters are gender non-conforming or at the very least are not big straight-acting jocks. I also appreciate that there was an effort to include this big group of friends, but they never really felt too real to me either because they all had jobs and identities that felt like they came out of a Christmas movie or something. I think maybe the reason why I refrained from giving this book one star even though I didn't enjoy it at all is I have some awareness that part of my lack of enjoyment comes from the audiobook narration. Sometimes I get migraines if I read for too long so I tend to listen to everything on audiobook if I can but I really came close to trying to read the ebooks for these.
Also the other reason this kind of bummed up from a one and a half to two stars for me was the way that Ilya Rozanov keeps popping up and there's a dopey but enjoyable exchange toward the end of the book. It made me weirdly giddy even though it's kind of silly.
ETA: I was thinking of the incredible Hulk when I was reading this book, but now I'm reading book 5 and they explicitly refer to them as Beauty and the Beast so maybe that's what this was all along.
I came close to giving this one star, to be honest, but I don't know, I might have just hated the audiobook narration. It felt really inert to me compared to the other books. Initially my plan was just to read Heated Rivalry and The Long Game, but when I started the latter, I noticed there were a lot of references to characters and events from other books in the series. Thus I decided to read them all. These characters never came alive for me and their chemistry never felt real to me. The dialogue never felt like real people talking. It all leaned too far along the scale of wish-fulfillment-written-by-and-for-women for me to connect to. I also hated the big obligatory final conflict in this book. It felt really stupid to me. I mean they always feel stupid, but this one felt especially stupid. part of me wants to make this a spoiler review so that I can talk about why I think the relationship dynamics at the heart of this conflict are toxic, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Actually though, one of the ways these books are so nakedly wish fulfillment by and for women is that there's almost always one of the characters who is female coded and this character is usually unreasonable and demanding and somehow the Hulkish other guy is almost idealistically perfect but somehow is always the one apologizing. The balance is a little bit better in this book in that way, but it is a dynamic that makes me roll my eyes. although speaking of Hulk, this book feels like it could have been modified from Incredible Hulk fanfiction.
It's too bad because I'm always wanting to read romance novels where one or more of the characters are gender non-conforming or at the very least are not big straight-acting jocks. I also appreciate that there was an effort to include this big group of friends, but they never really felt too real to me either because they all had jobs and identities that felt like they came out of a Christmas movie or something. I think maybe the reason why I refrained from giving this book one star even though I didn't enjoy it at all is I have some awareness that part of my lack of enjoyment comes from the audiobook narration. Sometimes I get migraines if I read for too long so I tend to listen to everything on audiobook if I can but I really came close to trying to read the ebooks for these.
Also the other reason this kind of bummed up from a one and a half to two stars for me was the way that Ilya Rozanov keeps popping up and there's a dopey but enjoyable exchange toward the end of the book. It made me weirdly giddy even though it's kind of silly.
ETA: I was thinking of the incredible Hulk when I was reading this book, but now I'm reading book 5 and they explicitly refer to them as Beauty and the Beast so maybe that's what this was all along.