It Happened One Autumn

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but after Westcliff took Lillian to his bed while she was clearly intoxicated, I could no longer root for their romance. He took advantage of her, plain and simple. It would be different if he had been drinking also, but he was stone cold sober and she was sloshed. It brings to mind the movie The Cutting Edge and how Doug refused to sleep with Kate while she was drunk, even though she was furious with him for it. That was a turning point for his character. The moment he proved himself to be a good guy at heart. He did the right thing, and what Westcliff SHOULD have done. Westcliff is no hero in my eyes. I can't look at him in the same way now.

(Probably 4.5, rounding up.) Loved the heroine, probably one of my favorite romance heroines. Mostly liked the hero, deducting a half-star here for how violent he was sometimes, particularly almost killing the countess and pulling Lillian off her horse, which seems really dangerous?. Still love the relationships between the Wallflowers most of all. Really enjoying this series!

So I read Wallflowers #4, then #1 and now #2. I can't tell if #4 has been my fave so far just because I started there? As a quartet, things get a little formulaic. The love story is always adversaries-to-lovers, which is a totally fine story (although I doubt there will ever be a finer version than Elizabeth Bennet & Mr. Darcy), but the repetition across this set makes me more critical of the idiosyncracies of each version. Lillian & Westcliff are my least favorite of the duos thus far, because their “we dislike each other so much maybe we're secretly crazy about each other” vibe is just a smidge too close to a “tease elementary school crush in ineffective and annoying ways” thing. They are legitimately obnoxious to each other at several points! But who am I to begrudge two fictional characters their happy ending of mutually pleasurable bickering punctuated by equally mutually pleasurable sex.