It has become a terrible habit of mine to blog only a few times a year, and most often, just to catch up on Wendy the Super Librarian’s TBR Challenge. And just like clockwork, I am doing it again. A full admission that I am just matching books I read to the themes. Few of them were actually read in the month I have listed them under.
Reading Note 87: February 19 – Previously, In Romance…
Any Trope but You by Victoria Lavine. This was so fun and cheeky. A burnt-out cynical yet successful romance author Margot Bradley is outed on social media as a fake by her angry fans so she travels to Alaska to escape the criticism and to try to write a book in a new genre. In Alaska she meets Dr Forrest Wakefield who ridiculously encompasses every romance trope. Margot eventually discovers that tropes are too surface level and people can be complex beyond the stereotype.
My favourite line in the book is “Cradled against his warm chest, I am a woman transformed. Never again will anyone catch Margot Bradley scoffing at a trope. If I were wearing a bodice, I’d rip it myself”.
Reading Note 88: March 19 – Rizz
sigh….here is a list of books which completely had no rizz for me and I struggled to get through:
Kilt Trip by Alexandra Kiley – fun title but the narrative dragged
Funny Story by Emily Henry – I was annoyed from start to end
Given Our History by Kristyn Miller – teen love angst sooooo many years later coming to fruition. A fave trope but it didn’t work for me.
An Ex for Christmas by Lauren Layne – sigh more drab friends-to-lovers. Is it me or is it the books?
Reading Note 89: April 16 – Location, Location, Location
The Italian’s Christmas Child by Lynne Graham – Well, it has been a long time since I returned to my old and favourite Mills & Boon author Lynne Graham, and when I read this, I was desperately in need for a comfort read. It was the typical Graham fair of an English Christmas, charm, a one-night-stand, a surprise baby and a two-year gap, with an Italian end location. It was schmoozy goodness, Vito and Holly had lovely fun sparks, with typical M&B angst and alpha-brain-shit-storm that needs to be overcome, and the book totally hit the mark for me.
May 21 – Older Couple
I haven’t read any novels with an older couple. However, I am relishing all the fun Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson gossip, and I have lined up a movie date in two weeks to watch The Naked Gun.
Reading Note 90: June 18 – Road Trip
Into The Woods by Jenny Holiday – This is not as much a road trip as a camping trip that does involve some road travel. I really loved the way the relationship between protagonists Teddy and Gretchen was developed. The music and dancing lifted off the page, the romance was built slowly and with spark. The book really explored what it means to aim for dreams that you hadn’t even realised you wanted. There were aspects of the story that rankled, especially the camp (I detest camping though at least they were in lodges and not tents apart from the one terrifying part in the book) near the lake where the heroine would go night swimming and I kept getting jitters because I kept thinking of all the mozzies and people who drown in lakes. Aggh! Though I liked the story, my camp ick just didn’t let me get immersed into the story enough. I did like the wink to Holiday’s Canadian Boyfriend (which I adored), yet this book didn’t quite reach the re-read 5 stars but it certainly was full of heart, and is a great romance read, especially if you like lake camping.
Reading Note 91: July 16 – Back in My Day…
One Last Shot by Betty Cayouette – another high school best friends make a deal to marry each other if they are still unmarried at 28. Because 28 is oh-so-old. Of course, Emerson and Theo hold back revealing their love for each other, making this a tedious he-said, she-said read. I really miss the days of romances being written in a head jumping 3rd POV throughout the book. Instead, I keep reading these alternating chapters going from the hero POV to the heroine POV and geez it is reductive. As though as readers, we need to be hand-held as to whose POV we are reading. It sucks that published writing has become so basic, and the reader is being imagined as barely literate. Because Back in My Day…
Shallowreader 
” I really miss the days of romances being written in a head jumping 3rd POV throughout the book. Instead, I keep reading these alternating chapters going from the hero POV to the heroine POV and geez it is reductive. As though as readers, we need to be hand-held as to whose POV we are reading. It sucks that published writing has become so basic, and the reader is being imagined as barely literate. Because Back in My Day…”
Oh, don’t get me started!
(Lovely to ‘see’ you, Vassíliki; I hope al is well for you and yours)
And lovely to see you too! Great to see we are all still grumping around. I love it!
Lord deliver me from the dual first-person romance where the start of each chapter tells you whose head you’re in. That’s a signal to me as the reader that the “voices” between the two protagonists are so indistinct that the author has to tell us who we’re reading about because we wouldn’t be able to tell otherwise.
Also, it’s not lost on me that back in my day I used to advocate that good romance could be written in first person (truly, we’d see it in category romance, Jessica Hart, some Cheryl Reavis…) and now here we are. The genre flooded with a ton of bad first person writing. Bah humbug.
I loved Funny Story when I read it, but I haven’t exactly dropped my life to immediately read more Emily Henry – so I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.
I have a theory on the Neeson/Anderson gossip. Everything is just so terrible that things like this give us the shot of serotonin we’re all desperate for. Plus, as a woman – OMG, give me all the age appropriate romances. Then you have their respective pasts – Neeson who lost his wife in such a tragic way and Anderson who hit her no f*cks era and stopped twisting herself to be someone others wanted her to be. I hope whatever they have together sticks and they’re happy.
“a signal to me as the reader that the “voices” between the two protagonists are so indistinct that the author has to tell us who we’re reading about because we wouldn’t be able to tell otherwise.”
The noise I made! This hits the nail on the head so squarely–mind you, not that third person narratives don’t suffer from the same poor writing, but at least we are not asked to believe we are in two different characters’ heads, we know we are in the author-as-omniscient narrator’s head.
Anderson/Neesom: I have issues with him (racism) but for the love of all that’s good, let two people past 50 (hell, a woman past 30) find lasting joy!
I don’t even care if it is just promo for the movie. At least it looks like they are having fun. As for Neesom – I don’t know much about him. I have never seen him in anything. He always seemed too fighty and too mumbly. Note taken on the racism.
And Pamela – her no-fucks-to-give era is gold. I am loving it!
You nailed – voices that are so indistinct you need to be told whose head you are in. I hadn’t picked up on it but yes. Like @azteclady, I made a noise. And also, I am craving those 3 POV books so much that I am going to start reading older romances again. The first person writing is mostly tedious.
I wanted to like Funny Story. I adored Book Lovers and hated Happy Place. I am not enjoying all the hit-and-misses with Emily Henry. I might need to give her up.
As for Anderson, who knew she would be the one who would be leading us in this flip-everyone-off era. Top Marks!
The night swimming alone gave me the heebie-jeebies too!
And I think it’s the books. They’re just so damn dull.
Good to know it is the books. And good to know that I am not alone on the night swimming ick!