Ricky
I gave this an extra star for all the Ilya content. Basically I liked anything in this book about Ilya, airplanes, or hotels. The central couple was okay. I like that we get another love interest who isn't serving straight-acting vibes. The hockey player seemed charming. I just wasn't super interested in their story or their connection. I think I'd probably rank this 4th in the series. It's cute though. And I like that it tries to address more serious issues like rape culture and there's a deeper exploration about life in the closet.
I've been thinking lately about how we dismiss a lot of media as wish fulfillment as though that's an ignoble phenomenon. What this whole Heated Rivalry phenomenon has highlighted is how desperate we've all been for stories in which people like us are allowed happy endings. This is really important and maybe the reason I found myself pulled into the world of gay romance in the first place. The other thing I've been thinking about is Philip Zimbardo's Heroic Imagination Project. The world needs stories in which people act in prosocial ways and things turn out okay. If all we get are cynical, dystopian stories, that's the world we're training ourselves for. We need to be reminded of our better angels and we need to be shown what doing the right thing looks like.
I gave this an extra star for all the Ilya content. Basically I liked anything in this book about Ilya, airplanes, or hotels. The central couple was okay. I like that we get another love interest who isn't serving straight-acting vibes. The hockey player seemed charming. I just wasn't super interested in their story or their connection. I think I'd probably rank this 4th in the series. It's cute though. And I like that it tries to address more serious issues like rape culture and there's a deeper exploration about life in the closet.
I've been thinking lately about how we dismiss a lot of media as wish fulfillment as though that's an ignoble phenomenon. What this whole Heated Rivalry phenomenon has highlighted is how desperate we've all been for stories in which people like us are allowed happy endings. This is really important and maybe the reason I found myself pulled into the world of gay romance in the first place. The other thing I've been thinking about is Philip Zimbardo's Heroic Imagination Project. The world needs stories in which people act in prosocial ways and things turn out okay. If all we get are cynical, dystopian stories, that's the world we're training ourselves for. We need to be reminded of our better angels and we need to be shown what doing the right thing looks like.