Adele
Couldn't get past the first few chapters reading this on my own but the pedestrian prose style is augmented by good narration in audio format. I expected this to be both more tragic and less queer than it is; what a welcome surprise to discover the drama isn't born of inner turmoil, self-loathing and blatant homophobia but rather the ordinary ways in which people's priorities conflict. For a book about beautiful, talented, rich people concerned with public perception, it leaves a gratifying amount of room for agency and joy. It takes definite moral stances and leaves little to the imagination, which rather takes away from the artistry of the novel, but it's confidently told, progresses well in terms of structure, and ultimately felt affirming.
Felt underdeveloped and obvious and it ends just when it might have got to saying something healing. Bonus points for recognizing that sharks can be cute and funny, and for characters with some potential. Even if the role reversal between good/evil and lawful/chaotic lacked depth and nuance, it's nice to see something other than the skinny/shredded, abled, white bodies depicted positively. I wanted more queerness though. Ambrosius being merely pretty and emotionally labile plays Into another stereotype I would rather see gone.
This was recommended by a random reddit user for the disability rep and as a wheelchair user in the lifestyle, I thought it was my duty to give this a whirl. On the positive side: the heroine is competent and the kink education aspect not terrible. For example, there's acknowledgement that kink is not always sexual, and some consideration of safety. The author did her due diligence on the emotional side of things.
It was also nice to see the female lead being more sexually forthcoming and the male lead instead needing a bit of time and encouragement - even though it all moves so quickly that in the end it seems to make little difference.
As for the negatives... Well, to start with, the emotional awareness and communication between the leads is terrible. They do side-step a couple of opportunities for drama (as they should - the heroine has a doctorate in psychology and she's a practicing therapist) but they're never clear on what they want or where they are at and their scene negotiation sucks. Consequently, they model consent poorly and the love between them feels non-specific and unbelievable. For one example, there is an unquestioned assumption that because Frankie discovers she likes being tied up, she's also a submissive, and the love interest comes in hot and heavy with the “good girls” and just generally off-putting fantasy dom behaviour.
Suffice to say, the kink and relationship aspects were not what I wanted them to be. There are only a couple of light kink scenes though, which I suppose would be a blessing - if the rest of the sex wasn't worse. The fact that our main characters' first meeting is marred by an overt focus on the hero's hardening cock is merely enough to make one raise one's eyebrows; it's the scenes near the end that ultimately drop this from a grudging two-star read into a one-star one. I stopped the audiobook to first pull a face, then to laugh. The male narrator sounded like he was well aware of the absurdity of what he was reading, too.
And lastly... while I think it's wonderful to see disability representation where the disability is not some show-stopping big issue to overcome, I would still personally have liked accessibility issues to be more acknowledged. It's a nice fantasy for a small town to be the hotbed of awareness I suppose, but it would have meant a great deal more to see the characters name and navigate upcoming issues as a team. For example: access to the club, or any of the myriad of ways in which disability unavoidably alters how you interact with the world or how other people interact with you, or the financial and time cost of independence; something to make it feel more rooted in reality. Of course, this is strictly a matter of taste.
A competent first novel with some cynical charm, but beat by beat, scene by scene, line by line obvious and written to elicit a swooning response from the audience. The male lead is the mortal god of campus and yet only cares for the heroine, he says all the predictably right things and has just the perfect amount of childhood trauma to appear vulnerable when we get to know him; the heroine is brilliant, always ready with a retort, and (spoiler alert) pure enough to fit almost any audience's taste. Their chemistry is exactly banter-deep and feels, like most of the book, engineered more than genuinely emotional. It's particularly disappointing to see a book that starts with a furtive affair turn so heavily on a negative view on sex, generally immature attitude towards relationships, and forcible monogamist messaging. Also, misunderstandings galore. The book even has a cartoonish bad guy to amp up the drama and help the novel tie up its loose ends. All of this would fit a young adult novel but feels childish in anything else.
The best part by far is the camaraderie of the black students union and the general celebration of British African culture and Black brilliance. The audiobook is also delightfully narrated.
There is enough goodness here to warrant a second read in print format. So much heart, and hope born out of acknowledging hardship and our innate capability to adapt. Several passages, especially those on embodied resiliency and being seen in our trauma and held with understanding, were lovely enough to choke me up a little. This might also be the best I have ever seen little children included in a novel. The main downsides for me were the uneven pacing - glacial start, hectic final act - and the neatness of the resolution that doesn't entirely reflect the complexity of what the novel otherwise portrays. I think I would also have enjoyed it just a bit more if the main character wasn't so very young, or quite so preternaturally capable completely on her own.
Audiobook note: Lovely narration by Karen Chilton; the few instances of melancholic singing are what convinced me to go for the audiobook.
The discussions on faith and addiction feel a bit obvious and one note, the strands on family and love recall other melancholic immigrant novels - I thought in particular of Vuong's On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous. The main draw, for me, was Gifty herself, a woman who survived the harshness of her childhood by hanging on to the promise of perfection. Her adult self, now more aware but still petrified by the past, felt like the gift of someone I know, have been, and perhaps still am.
Slightly annoyed because this is probably the most fascinating (or at any rate, most personally significant) story in the entire series and yet it's only a novella. It's sweet and offers moments of delight, and characters with promise, but it does not have the page count to deal with the topics it raises with as much nuance as they warrant. For example: at several points Reggie acknowledges the relative ease she enjoys as a wealthy woman, her ability to get the assistance and accommodations she needs. Her not wanting help when she doesn't need it makes perfect sense; her issues with communicating her needs does not and it isn't explored in any real sense. Instead she's shown repeatedly snapping at other people, and the growth each character goes through happens separately in silence, not together as they learn what loving each other means in practice.
Another related issue is that the moment of conflict near the end comes mainly from external sources. It is what ties the novella to the rest of the series, but it takes valuable time away from the main characters and their relationship. Another source of conflict that is already there on the page would have been to focus a bit more on the hero's side of things. He's already ready to believe he misread the situation entirely and has one foot out the door before he talks. That is a real issue and it would have felt much more significant to have Reggie validate his experience for a change - and I don't believe I'm only saying that because of how much effort I have spent learning to love Autistic people who have internalised the sense of their social incompetence all too well. Reggie already thinks about not letting Gus talk lowly of his emotional abilities again. But he never names exactly what he's dealing with, and she never does.
The first book I've finished in AGES, let alone read without getting so bored midway that I wondered what's the point of continuing. Hits some fairly standard notes for a YA urban fantasy: the lead is a scrappy, sarcastic survivor type a gift for killing, who is given little choice but to go monster-hunting across the map; upon leaving, she gets saddled with an absurdly handsome sidekick who is definitely not about to turn into a love interest; they encounter one ominous scene after another until it becomes clear they're pawns in a battle of the immortals. To balance out the predictability, it gets twistier toward the end, but in a way that's more confusing than surprising.
Neither the characters nor the plot would have kept me engaged in the story for long but the setting is interesting and the author has a way of hinting at history in a way that makes it feel alive. The climate apocalypse has left its marks on the culture, and on everyone who survived it. Tauma breathes through everything here, but so too does community responsibility, knowing who you are and whence you came, and the hope it brings.
I didn't care for the ending or the premise of the sequel, but will keep an eye out for the author's other work.
Oh I wish I'd have liked this! But I was bored, and annoyed by the egregious ideas about how people work (such as: torture, or self-torture for that matter, works), as well as annoyed by the cinematic elements. Don't even get me started on the authorial voice. She trusts her readers like I trust an unattended three-year-old in a kitchen.
Why read historical fiction when you can have contemporary with some set dressing? That's the crux of my issue with this series - it's fluidly written and all that, if a little heavy on the action and slapstick humor to work for me -but it's definitely chasing social points and mainly participating in the conversations of the writing moment, which automatically dates it and feels peachy to top it off. This is not the kind of historical queer representation I crave.