Romance Recap
I have read a plethora of romance novels in the last month or so and my feelings are mixed. I loved some of them, I hated others, but that is not a depiction of the genre at large. Here are some fast-paced thoughts on a lot of popular romance novels I have subjected myself to due to reading slumps. Enjoy my mild suffering.
1. What Happens After Midnight by K.L. Walther 🌕
Starting off horrendously, I decided to pick this bad boy off the shelf at the library because of my love for one of K.L. Walther's other books The Summer Of Broken Rules. Unlike that literary work, this one is offensive to Taylor Swift, God, literature, young adults, and honestly everyone walking this Godforsaken planet. Firstly, the superfluous Taylor Swift song titles did not do this book justice, as the author's desperate attempt to connect with her young audience ended up creating a monstrosity of bad writing that made me wish I was deaf and did not know pop superstar Dr. Taylor Swift. I cannot begin to describe to you how atrocious these references were because it is simply something you have to see to believe. Additionally, this book probably set back any progress we made as a society to prevent full-grown adults from writing sex scenes about teenagers, and even though this book is technically fade-to-black, it should not have even been a thought in the first place. Also, the love interests name is TAGGART. SWELL. I genuinely could not come up with a worse sounding name with a spear at my chest, a pit of snakes, a cliff, and a gun to my head threatening me all at the same time. Not to dish on the first name all too much because I have a friend myself named Tag, but Taggart? Taggart Swell? That sounds like a medical disease. Furthermore, the plot was lazy, the writing was bad, the story was bland, the setting was unoriginal, and all the other genuine negative reviews I could give a book. Save yourself and please do not touch this book with a five foot pole.
2. Practice Makes Perfect by Sarah Adams 🌕🌗
Now I am unsure who misguided me into thinking this was even a decent book, nonetheless a young adult book, but I blame the world. My immediate concern stemmed from the fact that these two already knew they liked each other from page 1. No (initial) meet cute, no slow burn, just long-held pining already. That threw me off a little bit, but I figured that I should not judge a book after only about 4 pages. I continued reading, and the more I read the more I wished I had trusted my instinct. A smaller gripe of mine came up quickly. While this may be a bit of an overreaction, I despise when books say something like "he was the Will Griffin" because sorry! I don't know who the fuck that is! It reminds me of that one recent viral video where the woman is like "I'm going to call the Joe Anderson on you!" and the man just sits their confused because that name means absolutely nothing to him and, in lieu of the other woman's confidence, he judges her for the oblivious attitude she holds toward the obvious lack of fame her husband has. I don't know who Will Griffin is. I don't care about his Buzzfeed article (because genuine question, when was the last time you read a Buzzfeed article?). And I most certainly don't care that he is a "bad boy" because he has a flower tattoo on his arm. The premise of this book revolves around the utterly outdated and feminism-crushing trope of "she's the good girl who still has her virginity and wants to get married. She comes from a nice household with sisters and she is a perfect little angel who has never done any wrong and does everything in her life to please the men around her. She probably cannot pass the Bechdel test, even though she has never even grazed a male's hands. He is a bad boy bodyguard with dark hair and tattoos that secretly had a rough childhood. He sleeps around because he does not like commitment, but he falls in love with her the moment he sees her. He only cares for her and is only nice to her." It's an overused, boring concept that I truly hate with every fiber of my being. One that makes me feel like a beggar asking for one cent of spare change except I'm asking this poor woman to just STAND UP and find a man that actually shares her expectations of a relationship. The entire conflict of this book rests in the fact that this man does not want to get married and she does, but for some reason, like that toxic ex your friend has that cheated on her 4 times in the two months that they were dating which caused her to stay hung up on him, despite that incident happening 6 months ago, where they now only see each other to hook up once every six weeks, she cannot let go. I do not know if I am too liberal, too northeastern, too gay, too cynical or what but this book felt worse than I did after getting 13 of my teeth pulled between the ages of eleven and thirteen.
3. The Love Wager by Lynn Painter 🌕🌕
I have read all of Painter's young adult novels, and I did enjoy them, but this one did not compare. Going into this book, I did not expect like it nearly as much as the extremely targeted young adult novels whose audience includes teenage hopeless romantics that do nothing with their lives except read and listen to pop music to seem deep, but I still read it. This book felt like very similar to Betting On You, and it was obviously different, but the resemblance was still there. Writing this is so difficult because this book was just so forgettable and mid that I cannot relay a single detail about it. I could sit here and rack my brain while typing away at this computer, but I guess if you just want a mediocre romance novel about two adults with poorly written smut that I skipped because it made me so uncomfortable, here you go.
4. The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
Now we are getting somewhere because I adored this book. The moment I opened it up, this book entranced me. Each word in this book wove with those around it to create vibrant imagery, beautiful magic, and the perfect love story. As we know from my love for Watch Over Me, I am a sucker and a slut for a magical realist novel, but this book took me somewhere else. The world of this book, the way it deals with grief and passion and love and confusion and adulthood and life made me think about how I want to be in the future. I would recommend this book a thousand times over. I did not rate this book 5 stars, it only got 4.5, but I really really thought about it. The book sat in my story graph for about a week as a 4.75, a ranking I don't give, because I really could not decide whether or not to go for gold. I decided against it, but that in no way means that this book was not an insanely spectacular work of art. Please read it. I loved it. You'll love it.
5. Begin Again by Emma Lord 🌕🌕
Ugh. Back to the shitty young adult ones. This book had one purpose, which was to save me from the horror that is my summer reading book The Wall, and it did that. It served its purpose. But not before being another horribly written, Taylor Swift-ridden, mediocre college romance. I did not care for the characters at all. It was super cliché. The story was extremely predictable. It did not really add anything that has not already been said. It felt bland and uncreative. I don't even know. Read it if you want, don't expect much. It got me out of a slump. That's all I have. Sorry these ones aren't very long at the end its just those first two books were horrifyingly bad, this and The Love Wager were just boring, and The Seven Year Slip was so fantastic I don't trust myself to put it into words. For this one I would just pass.
Welp that was my recent reading. I think I got a little tired after the first two because my rants were ranting. Thanks for sticking around. I need to stop torturing myself. Bye bye!
