Hali
It's somewhere between greatly written and embarrassingly out of touch. The main character Anna mentions multiple times how she is bothered by Will's competitiveness because she is a single mother of two and she can't lose her job and the flexibility it brings, but her disliking him is later on framed mainly as her being competitive as well and her being worried about her position thanks to him snatching up chances is dropped. Will has his own good reasons for wanting those, dont get me wrong! But this is never spoken about, in conversations, Annas dislike of Will is reduced to him being competitive and annoying. I think this is what bothered me the most about the book. As soon as this was forgotten, the book (regrettably) became a lot more fun.
You can really feel the tension between Anna and Will and even with "fade to black" sex scenes, the book is sexy. Their flirting in well-written and they have chemistry. The characters – aside from Anna, sadly – are given a lot of respect and fleshed out like crazy, too. It's honestly great.
Not the worst but two more things that bothered me:
- the author managed to write autistic weirdos multiple times (sometimes in a good, sometimes in a bad light, although the way the first one was written is a bit too close for comfort to an actual ableist depiction of autistic people for me)
- the author is... out of touch... but tries to be in touch... the mid-20 year olds are not bonding over Roblox and the kids are not calling each other default, usually
Tldr: There's some glaring issues but I still had a lot of fun reading this book thanks to how well-written the rest of the book is.
It's somewhere between greatly written and embarrassingly out of touch. The main character Anna mentions multiple times how she is bothered by Will's competitiveness because she is a single mother of two and she can't lose her job and the flexibility it brings, but her disliking him is later on framed mainly as her being competitive as well and her being worried about her position thanks to him snatching up chances is dropped. Will has his own good reasons for wanting those, dont get me wrong! But this is never spoken about, in conversations, Annas dislike of Will is reduced to him being competitive and annoying. I think this is what bothered me the most about the book. As soon as this was forgotten, the book (regrettably) became a lot more fun.
You can really feel the tension between Anna and Will and even with "fade to black" sex scenes, the book is sexy. Their flirting in well-written and they have chemistry. The characters – aside from Anna, sadly – are given a lot of respect and fleshed out like crazy, too. It's honestly great.
Not the worst but two more things that bothered me:
- the author managed to write autistic weirdos multiple times (sometimes in a good, sometimes in a bad light, although the way the first one was written is a bit too close for comfort to an actual ableist depiction of autistic people for me)
- the author is... out of touch... but tries to be in touch... the mid-20 year olds are not bonding over Roblox and the kids are not calling each other default, usually
Tldr: There's some glaring issues but I still had a lot of fun reading this book thanks to how well-written the rest of the book is.