Book Review: All for One by Lillie Lainoff

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Historical Fiction, Retelling
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: March 8th, 2022
Pages: 12hr 23mins, audiobook
Source: Library

Tania de Batz is most herself with a sword in her hand. Everyone in town thinks her near-constant dizziness makes her weak, nothing but “a sick girl”; even her mother is desperate to marry her off for security. But Tania wants to be strong, independent, a fencer like her father—a former Musketeer and her greatest champion.

Then Papa is brutally, mysteriously murdered. His dying wish? For Tania to attend finishing school. But L’Académie des Mariées, Tania realizes, is no finishing school. It’s a secret training ground for a new kind of Musketeer: women who are socialites on the surface, but strap daggers under their skirts, seduce men into giving up dangerous secrets, and protect France from downfall. And they don’t shy away from a swordfight.

With her newfound sisters at her side, Tania feels for the first time like she has a purpose, like she belongs. But then she meets Étienne, her first target in uncovering a potential assassination plot. He’s kind, charming, and breathlessly attractive—and he might have information about what really happened to her father. Torn between duty and dizzying emotion, Tania will have to lean on her friends, listen to her own body, and decide where her loyalties lie…or risk losing everything she’s ever wanted.

This debut novel is a fierce, whirlwind adventure about the depth of found family, the strength that goes beyond the body, and the determination it takes to fight for what you love. 

Oh, I wish I could rate this higher, but there were a lot of flaws in One for All, most of them the author’s, but one that wasn’t.

The biggest issue I had was the pacing. Tania doesn’t meet Etienne until the 50% mark, and by that point, any relationship they might have had no room to breath or time to feel natural. Maybe this was intentional on Lainoff’s part, but I think there were better ways to go about it, so when the third act came along I would have been more emotionally engaged than I was.

There’s also the issue that the Musketeers fight for the King of France, and, well, Lainoff does attempt to flesh this out by having the characters criticize the King and say they’re fighting more for France, and that if the King dies then the poor will suffer most, and while that’s true… it still felt like it was mostly just pasted in and not really developed enough. Yes, the girls are fighting to prove women can be Musketeers, and they disagree with the villain’s plot, but they also don’t seem to have any alternate ideas as to how to improve things.

They say they want to avoid having the poorest people pay the price in blood, but frankly, their actions will kill those same people eventually, either through starvation or illness or any of the other myriad, slow ways people died while the rich did their thing. All that fell flat for me and left the characters not looking the greatest.

One for All does start out pretty strong, and I was engaged up until Tania leaves her village to go to Paris. There, the pacing combined with Wilson’s inability to differentiate her voices for the characters (or, when she does, her inability to stick to those voices) made it harder to follow.

The other issue was the choice of narrator. I like Mara Wilson herself well enough, but her skills at narration were… lacking. I’m not sure if this was a director’s choice or her own, but sometimes she had long pauses between lines, up to 2 seconds long, which made me think we were starting a new scene or a new paragraph altogether, only for the scene to continue. The pauses and the speed of her speech were so slow even at 1.50x speed that I had to turn it up to 1.75x just for it to be manageable for me to listen to. She wasn’t consistent in this, either, so sometimes we had long pauses, other times not, so it threw me off.

I suspect if I had read this instead of listened to the audiobook, I would have liked it slightly better. I’ll probably look into Lainoff’s next book, to see how she improves past the typical debut shakiness.

Book Review: The Ex Hex (The Ex Hex #1) by Erin Sterling

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: September 28th, 2021
Length: 7 hrs 23mins
Source: Library

Nine years ago, Vivienne Jones nursed her broken heart like any young witch would: vodka, weepy music, bubble baths…and a curse on the horrible boyfriend. Sure, Vivi knows she shouldn’t use her magic this way, but with only an “orchard hayride” scented candle on hand, she isn’t worried it will cause him anything more than a bad hair day or two.

That is until Rhys Penhallow, descendent of the town’s ancestors, breaker of hearts, and annoyingly just as gorgeous as he always was, returns to Graves Glen, Georgia. What should be a quick trip to recharge the town’s ley lines and make an appearance at the annual fall festival turns disastrously wrong. With one calamity after another striking Rhys, Vivi realizes her silly little Ex Hex may not have been so harmless after all.

Suddenly, Graves Glen is under attack from murderous wind-up toys, a pissed off ghost, and a talking cat with some interesting things to say. Vivi and Rhys have to ignore their off the charts chemistry to work together to save the town and find a way to break the break-up curse before it’s too late.

Sir Percival the cat was the best part of this, especially when he called Gwyn “mama”. Otherwise I rolled my eyes at a lot of this, especially the heavy focus on sex when frankly there were much more important things going on. Mayhaps I am simply a Clueless Ace, but do allosexual adults really spend this much time thinking/talking/joking about sex and getting turned on at the drop of a hat? Sounds exhausting. Couldn’t be me.

This book shares two problems I had with another witchy romance book, Payback’s a Witch. Both of them feature settings consisting of a town in America that was founded a few hundred years previously by an ancestor of one of the main characters. Just like in the aforementioned book, nothing is said about what happened to the Native Americans who owned the land before it was colonized. Really gotta wonder about that! Also, this book takes place in Georgia. So, uh… did any of the ancestors, you know, enslave Black people? It’s stated that the town was founded at least 300 years ago, so.

Maybe I’m ruining the witchy rom-com vibe the book was going for by trying to pry deeper into the worldbuilding and wanting answers to these serious questions, but if you introduce this kind of world, a bitch is gonna wonder about a few things.

There’s also a couple of snide remarks about how “fake” witchcraft has become very popular (“Everyone’s a witch these days.”) and this was a thing in Payback’s a Witch as well. Kind of tired of it, to be honest. Just because a lot of people are experimenting with witchcraft doesn’t make them fakers or posers. It’s just a sense of condescension that rubs me the wrong way.

Otherwise, I wasn’t moved much by the main couple. Like I said, the main focus on sex dampened by ability to really get into them or root for them as a couple. I also just found Vivienne annoying as hell. This comes down to a personality issue for me; I don’t see why characters, especially female ones, have to still be torn up and hurt by a dude even nine years after he did something to them, or be frankly huge bitches when the dudes show back up. I try to cut some slack since I know this is me being judgmental, and I guess it’s fine if it still hurts a bit, but come on. You’re twenty-eight. Let’s act like the adult we are instead of the 19-year-old who got her heart broken.

Book Review: Iron Widow (Iron Widow #1) by Xiran Jay Zhao

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi
Publisher: Penguin Teen
Publication Date: September 21st, 2021
Pages: 400, hardcover
Source: NetGalley

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.

When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

Iron Widow has a solid premise and, unfortunately, not much else.

I wanted very badly to love this novel, as I enjoyed all of its comp titles and I like what I’ve seen of Xiran on twitter. But Iron Widow feels a bit like a first rough draft where the writer was just getting the general beats down and not overly paying attention to anything else such as the world building, characterization, or pacing, or even making certain the characters’ dialogue doesn’t sound exactly the same.

Even accounting for the fact that English isn’t Xiran’s first language and the differences in storytelling norms between English and Chinese, the writing simply isn’t good. It’s very blunt, and while maybe that was the point as the novel is entirely in Zetian’s POV and she’s not a subtle person, I can’t be sure about that. We’re given no time to really pause and reflect on certain scenes or emotions, which leaves it all feeling shallow. Even Zetian’s relationship with her Big Sister, who’s the entire driving force behind the events of the novel, barely gets any mention. We’re told everything and shown nothing.

It really seems as if the author only had a few scenes crystal clear in their head but had no interest in building the rest of the novel around those scenes in a way that made sense. There are a few bits of the novel that really shine, while the rest are hastily put together and shoved to the side so the author could get to the stuff they actually cared about. I couldn’t really tell you a thing about the worldbuilding except that it’s a Chinese sci-fi world where boys and girls have to fight aliens called Hunduns, and the girls are basically batteries for the boys and die in the process of the fighting.

Which brings me to Zetian’s story: I could not, in any way, believe her arc because it made no sense. Where she ends up at the end of the novel is unbelievable; at several points in the story, she should have been stopped simply because she’s about as subtle as a trainwreck on a boat and, frankly, not entirely smart about her plots. Readers looking for a character who manages to play the game intelligently and with subtlety should look elsewhere, because that’s very much not Zetian’s style, and while I understand that’s what Jay Zhao was going for, it doesn’t work. At all.

In a way, I think Iron Widow would have benefited incredibly from not being a YA novel–being an adult novel focused on teenage characters instead–and having multiple POVs. Zetian is limited in a lot of ways (including physically–she has bound feet, though at times it seems like Jay Zhao forgot about that, given that it doesn’t overly impact Zetian’s ability to do things that much) and the middle drags because we can’t see how other pieces are being moved, if they’re being moved at all. Given how the novel was written, I sort of doubt it; the characters come in when they’re needed, do what the plot/Zetian’s characterization and arc require them to do, and then leave, as if they don’t exist outside of their on-page appearances or have an impact on the world outside of them.

And now my final, biggest issue with the novel: For all that it touts itself as a feminist novel, and for all that Zetian claims she wants to save girls, neither Zetian nor the novel seem to actually like other girls that much. Zetian is a prickly person, so I get that she wouldn’t get along with everyone, but the novel itself doesn’t treat girls other than Zetian that well. There’s a difference between your character having some internalized misogyny issues and the writing backing her up on it by having every female character she encounters either be an enemy or get killed by the end of the novel. I don’t require Zetian to never have a bad word to say about other girls or for the novel not to have antagonistic relationships between them, but her scenes with other girls are so scant and overwhelmingly negative. If feminism means only One True Awesome Girl, it’s not one I’m interested in.

I did like the way the mecha functions, and I like that the love triangle resolves itself into an actual poly relationship. I wish the rest of the novel had been as good as some of the scenes inside, but unfortunately, it wasn’t.

Book Review: The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist (Celeste Rossan #1) by Ceinwen Langley

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Historical Fantasy Fairytale Retelling
Publisher: Feed the Writer Press
Publication Date: September 1st, 2021
Pages: 365, eBook
Source: Library

Aspiring young naturalist Celeste Rossan is determined to live a life of adventure and scientific discovery. But when her father loses everything, Celeste’s hopes of ever leaving her home town are dashed… until she sees a narrow opportunity to escape to Paris and attend the 1867 Exposition Universelle.

Celeste seizes her chance, but the elements overwhelm her before she can make it five miles. In desperation, she seeks refuge in an abandoned chateau only to find herself trapped inside the den of an unknown species: a predator with an intelligence that rivals any human.

It’s the discovery of a lifetime. Or, it will be, if Celeste can earn the beast’s trust without losing her nerve – or her heart – to her in the process.

The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist has some interesting spins on the Beauty and the Beast fairytale, such as Celeste (the Beauty) sacrificing herself to a marriage she doesn’t want in order to save her family, instead of sacrificing herself to the Beast, as well as making her a naturalist/scientist. I did enjoy these takes on the plot beats of the original fairytale. I also liked Celeste well enough as a main character, although I’m not sure she had much of an arc, as such. I felt she was more or less the same character in the end as she was in the beginning of the novel.

The biggest issue is that the pacing is very off. We don’t meet the Beast until close to the 50% mark. The first half is spent on Celeste’s life and the circumstances that lead her to being desperate enough to run away. I’m not opposed to this idea, but we simply spend too much time in it, and as a consequence the story dragged quite a lot. The better choice may have been to shorten this and have Celeste act sooner.

Langley’s choice not to introduce the Beast until nearly halfway in also harmed the progression of Celeste’s relationship with her. Their progression from distrust to trust, to friendship, to love wasn’t as clear cut as I would have liked, and in the end I’m not entirely certain I believed the love between them. Quite literally, Celeste initially spends more time on-page with a barn owl in the castle than she does with the Beast.

At times it felt like Langley suffered from the issue of not really knowing what to have Celeste do in the castle, and instead chose to focus more on scenes with Celeste and the Beast. However then the issue became that there simply wasn’t enough time to develop that relationship as it should have been developed.

Also, if I didn’t know this was the first in a possible series, I would have been very put off by the fact that Celeste doesn’t seem to spend much time thinking about her family in the last chapter. They still believe she’s dead and here she is, going off on an adventure with her wife, and she doesn’t even think about them once. No remorse? No guilt? Maybe this will be handled in the sequel, but it should have had a mention here, in my opinion.

The strongest parts of the novel were the technical writing aspects of it — Langley has a lovely writing style that’s easy to read, and I was able to envision her world easily. Her characters were also strong, and I appreciated that she didn’t go the Gaston route with Celeste’s fiance Etienne. If the issues of pacing were fixed, I would have enjoyed this novel much more. I may still read the sequel (I’m thinking it’ll be a Little Mermaid retelling, given some dialogue in the end).

Book Review: That Weekend by Kara Thomas

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Young Adult Thriller
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: June 19th, 2021
Pages: 336, hardcover
Source: Library

Three best friends, a lake house, a secret trip – what could go wrong?

It was supposed to be the perfect prom weekend getaway. But it’s clear something terrible happened when Claire wakes up alone and bloodied on a hiking trail with no memory of the past forty-eight hours.

Three went up the mountain, but only one came back.

Now everyone wants answers – most of all, Claire. She remembers Friday night, but after that… nothing. And now Kat and Jesse – her best friends – are missing.

That weekend changes everything.

What happened on the mountain? And where are Kat and Jesse? Claire knows the answers are buried somewhere in her memory, but as she’s learning, everyone has secrets – even her best friends. And she’s pretty sure she’s not going to like what she remembers.

This was fully engaging up until the point where Claire goes to college. After that, it seems to lose itself a bit, especially as her going away to college takes her out of the main setting where the action is happening. It never really regained its footing after that and it lost the urgency. 

I do understand that this happens in real life, too, where investigations can go for months and people have to live their lives, so perhaps Thomas was trying for realism here. The problem is that we lose a lot of what happens to Claire during this time, which as we’re told by Claire is quite a lot. 

The other issue was the ending, where Thomas evidently wasn’t content to just have the expected twists; she includes another huge twist that, frankly, was unnecessary and added nothing to the story overall, especially as it’s revealed in one of the last chapters and so the story can’t explore the impact it has on the characters it involves. It felt a bit cheap, to be honest, and didn’t give that sort of thing the severity it deserves. 

So, it’s not my favorite of Thomas’, but it hardly ruins my enjoyment of her works overall. 

Book Review: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Non-fiction Biography
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Publication Date: April 18th, 2021
Pages: 608, hardcover
Source: NetGalley

In the first major biography of Bonhoeffer in forty years, “New York Times” best-selling author Eric Metaxas takes both strands of Bonhoeffer’s life―the theologian and the spy―to tell a searing story of incredible moral courage in the face of monstrous evil. In a deeply moving narrative, Metaxas uses previously unavailable documents―including personal letters, detailed journal entries, and firsthand personal accounts―to reveal dimensions of Bonhoeffer’s life and theology never before seen.

Around fifteen years ago, I watched a wonderful documentary about Bonhoeffer on PBS. I was intrigued by this Lutheran theologian who defied the Nazis. His integrity, his struggle with the nationalism and racism he witnessed both in his home country of Germany and in the United States, and his sincere desire to share his message of faith and salvation came shining through. While I may not agree with some of his theological points, I admire his actions during WWII.

This is not that Bonhoeffer, at least not entirely. The Bonhoeffer we meet in Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy is a creation of Eric Metaxas, taking specific writings of Bonhoeffer and filtering them through his personal lens of evangelicalism. Metaxas has a passion for Bonhoeffer bordering on idolatry, and that’s a problem in a biographer. Metaxas has little understanding of the social and economic influences during Bonhoeffer’s life, and dismisses the prevalence of anti-Semitism.

He also does not curate the work well. Much of the book is a data dump of Bonhoeffer’s works, with entire letters filling multiple chapters.

It’s a disappointment. It’s not the first biography I’ve read written by someone with an axe to grind, but it’s a shame it happened to the story of this wonderful theologian.

A Trio of Picture Book Reviews

Since I work at a library, a lot of picture books come my way every day. Sometimes I take a few minutes to read them and occasionally review them. However, those reviews tend to be pretty short, so instead of devoting an entire post to a review that’s not even a paragraph long, I’ll bundle them together!

Stella’s Stellar Hair by Yesenia Moises

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Published: January 5th, 2021
Publisher: Imprint
Pages: 40, hardcover

Stella’s Stellar Hair is a fun exploration not only of various Black hairstyles, but of the planets as well. I loved the art style and the vibrant but still soft colors; Moises’ use of color is truly stunning. I also especially loved how deep thought was obviously put into how to tie the Black hairstyles to the planets themselves — so for Black people living very close to the sun, Moises says that the extreme heat would make it easiest to have dreads. For Black people living on Neptune, long waves to match the planet’s oceans would make sense. This is a creative, fun book that children–especially Black girls–will love.

Outside, Inside by LeUyen Pham

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Published: January 5th, 2021
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Pages: 48, hardcover

The art style was cute and the prose was nice, and I appreciated reading a book that explained things in a way a child could understand. It was maybe a little oversimplified but that’s probably to be expected. 

But I noticed one big flaw: In all the families and people Pham includes, all of them are hetero and able-bodied. When you’ve given yourself a goal to talk about how everyone had to stay inside, you give yourself the responsibility of making sure it shows through in the art. I only noticed because there is a pretty good representation of different groups so the lack of certain ones stood out.

I don’t think it was intentional; I think Pham and her team just didn’t notice. It happens. 

Macca the Alpaca by Matt Cosgrove

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Published: February 4th, 2021
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Pages: 24, hardcover

The art was cute, and I loved Macca’s personality and how it showed through the art style. But I’m not sure about the message — it seems to suggest forgiving bullies even when they do nothing to earn that forgiveness, which I think is a much more nuanced lesson than a picture book can tackle, and not one of which I personally approve.

I also heavily question the use of the word “thug” to describe a big brown llama who bullies the smaller white alpaca. I think perhaps the author should have examined their unconscious biases.

That’s it from me! Have you read any children’s picture books that you loved lately?

Book Review: The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Horror
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Publication Date: October 6th, 2020
Pages: 352, trade paperback
Source: NetGalley

A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel. 

Pray they are hungry.

Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more you fear them, the stronger they become. 

This will be a hard one to review, because I think some of my dislike of The Hollow Places will come down to personal preference. I’ve not read the original story The Hollow Places builds on, but much like The Willows, I think The Hollow Places would have worked better as a short story. Simply put, there’s not a whole lot here. It feels a little too flimsy to keep the story going for 300+ pages. There’s a lot of repetition in the set up of scenes and how they progress, and for a few chapters in the middle it feels like Kingfisher is trying to find a way to pad the story. 

The characters also conveniently don’t put together things they’ve seen or heard to figure out what’s going on, when it’s incredibly obvious. I can understand that maybe Kingfisher was going for a “they were so scared they couldn’t think straight” type of deal. But after a while, it became more like, “I’m making them not put these pieces together because it serves the story better.” Also, how did the bunkers get built? And why did the people not build, like, underground tunnels to connect the bunkers? If the creatures can’t get into the bunkers or underground, why not just build underground tunnels? I feel like I may have missed something on that front, because it’s such an obvious solution that I can’t believe it isn’t brought up in the novel.

Also, why did no one think “If we can get through this hole to this other world, then something from that other world could also pass into ours?” at any point? There’s only a fear of the human protagonists going back through the hole and not that anything could come through from the other side.

As for what comes down to personal preference, well, I’ve found that I just don’t find cosmic horror that scary. To me, it’s only logical and rational that there are beings out in the universe that are beyond human comprehension, and that some of them are actively hostile to humans or don’t care about us at all. This doesn’t bother me in the least. 

I also apparently don’t find trees that scary, even if they somehow move around by themselves. The atmosphere didn’t really get to me. It even has a scene of one of my personal nightmares–being in water and not being able to see what’s around you, underneath said water, and when it could be coming for your ankles–and I could only shrug. 

And then there’s Simon. He’s Kara’s friend in her new home, and very, very gay. Kingfisher reminds us of his gayness every chance she gets. Not only that, Kara brings up his gayness every chance she gets, and how he’s “totally not her type” and how “nothing will ever happen between them because, again, GAY.” 

[Simon:] “First we’re going to fix the drywall patch. Then we’re going to tie you to the bed.”
“… Kinky.”
“Yes, but you’re not my type, hon.”

The overly sexualized, sassy, well dressed gay friend is a stereotype for a reason. Kingfisher says she based Simon off real gay people she’s known, so I’m trying not to be too harsh about it because there are gay people who act like this, but in nearly every single scene Simon is in, he makes some kind of gay sex joke or reference. This may come down to me being asexual and not really liking those types of jokes, though. There’s also the argument to be made that it’s one thing for a real person to be comfortable acting like this, but it’s another for a writer to make their character act like a stereotype. There’s just not much depth to Simon, and he doesn’t really seem to add much of anything to the story except to patch up the hole in Kara’s wall.

Kara also makes sarcastic jokes whenever something scary happens, and after a while, it kills the horror of the situation. I understand that Kingfisher was going for “using humor to defuse the terror of the situation” but it was overused to the point that I was like, “Well, if the characters aren’t taking it that seriously, why should I?” This is also where the repetition of scenes comes in: Something scary happens, Kara or Simon would make a joke about it to defuse the situation, and go about their business. 

The reason I rated this two stars is for the ending. I won’t spoil it, but I really, really liked what Kingfisher did with the museum and its inhabitants in the end. Outside of the unseen creatures, there were a few truly horrifying moments. But otherwise, The Hollow Places was a miss for me.

Book Review: When a Rogue Meets His Match (Greycourt #2) by Elizabeth Hoyt

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Historical romance
Publisher: Forever
Publication Date: December 1st, 2020
Pages: 511, mass market paperback
Source: Library

The second novel in New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Elizabeth Hoyt’s Greycourt Series features an enemies-to-lovers romance with her signature blend of captivating characters and sensual romance.

Ambitious, sly, and lethally intelligent, Gideon Hawthorne has spent his life clawing his way up from the gutter. For the last ten years, he’s acted as the Duke of Windemere’s fixer, performing the most dangerous tasks without question. Now Gideon’s ready to quit the duke’s service and work solely for himself. But Windermere wants Gideon to complete one last task, and his reward is impossible to resist: Messalina Greycourt’s hand in marriage.

Witty, vivacious Messalina Greycourt has her pick of suitors. When Windermere summons Messalina to inform his niece that she must marry Mr. Hawthorne, she is appalled. But she’s surprised when Gideon offers her a compromise: as long as she plays the complacent wife, he promises to leave her alone until she asks for his touch. Since Messalina is confident that she’ll never ask Gideon for anything, she readily agrees. However, the more time she spends with Gideon, the harder it is to stay away.

I think I may need to give up on this series. I’m not sure what changed between Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series and this one, but the quality went downhill hard. 

I wasn’t able to put into words exactly what left me underwhelmed about When a Rogue Meets His Match until I read Kelly Bowen’s novella that’s included in the paperback. That novella is easily a five star read, and it’s made me interested in checking out Bowen’s other works. 

What Bowen’s 100ish page novella had that Hoyt’s entire 300+ page novel lacked was a strong sense of character. Gideon is the only character who felt fully fleshed out. He had a full history that informed his character and choices and behavior in the present. In comparison, Messalina’s lack of on-page history was stark. We get mentions of the family members that have passed, and how Messalina and her siblings came to live with their uncle, but none of it informs Messalina’s character past her desire to keep her younger sister Lucretia from their uncle. At least, her past doesn’t inform her character to the extent Gideon’s past does.

Added to that, there was no chemistry between Messalina and Gideon whatsoever. I noticed that my interest in the novel shot up when Messalina shared a scene with her sister, because in comparison to her interactions with Gideon, Messalina and Lucretia’s scenes felt more organic and natural. 

Also, the primary conflict that causes our couple to momentarily split wasn’t resolved well enough for my liking. Gideon lied to Messalina, and they never actually talk about that aspect of the problem. 

I don’t know if Hoyt changed editors between the last Maiden Lane book and the Greycourt series, or if she’s simply attempting to write tropes she doesn’t have the ability to pull off believably. I think I’m done with this series unless I hear the third book improves significantly. I’m honestly sad about this, because Hoyt was one of my favorite romance authors, and one of the few whose sex scenes I read often to learn how to write my own. All good things must come to an end, I suppose.

Book Review: The Project by Courtney Summers

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Contemporary Young Adult
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Publication Date: February 2nd, 2021
Pages: 352, hardcover
Source: NetGalley

Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo’s sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there’s more to the group than meets the eye. She’s spent the last six years of her life trying—and failing—to prove it.

When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and reunite with Bea once and for all. When her investigation puts her in the direct path of its leader, Lev Warren and as Lo delves deeper into The Project, the lives of its members it upends everything she thought she knew about her sister, herself, cults, and the world around her—to the point she can no longer tell what’s real or true. Lo never thought she could afford to believe in Lev Warren . . . but now she doesn’t know if she can afford not to.

In The Project, Courtney Summers takes on cults and how people fall into them, to varying degrees of minimal success. 

This will probably be my least favorite Courtney Summers book. While I found her technical writing style to be as good as ever, her character work is surprisingly not her strongest, especially when it comes to the main character, Lo. Bev’s story was far more believable than Lo’s, and we only get bits and pieces of it interspersed throughout the novel. 

Considering how against The Unity Project Lo is, her slide into becoming entangled with the cult is unconvincing. She offers up very little fight even in the beginning. I do understand that Summers wanted to show that Lo is in over her head, which is why she frankly fails at being a journalist on her first outing, but there were several instances where I found her to be almost unbelievably gullible and just not very bright. On her very first meeting with Lev, she accepts and drinks a glass of water made for her by someone else in the cult. Maybe I’m just a suspicious person, but I found it hard to swallow that Lo, who is so suspicious of the Project, would drink something given to her by one of the members without stopping to be like, “Wait, could this be drugged?” 

I also didn’t find Lev to be that compelling a cult leader or character. At least, I didn’t find him compelling enough that both Bev and Lo fall into lust with him and have sex with him. Which is also never brought up as a kind of, “Uh, hey, isn’t it kind of creepy that this dude in his late 30s is sleeping with an eighteen year old girl and then a nineteen year old girl?” thing. It happens and then no one, not even Bev and Lo, bring it up, internally or otherwise. To be fair, though, it’s probably incredibly hard to write those kinds of characters convincingly. 

I think Courtney Summers just bit off more than she could chew in The Project, which is a shame, as she’s a skilled and experienced writer. But sometimes, even if you give it your best shot, the story just gets away from an author, and that’s what happened here.