Blythe RipponCritiques

I like that the focus of the book is split between the supreme court case and the relationship between Genevieve and Victoria. Flashbacks are pretty minimal, there's a bit of a mystery (a little bit), and some humor (which I didn't expect).

I thought it was well written and interesting and I think most of my friends who share my reading tastes will like it, too.

Recensione in italiano: http://thereadingpal.blogspot.it/2017/04/recensione-benched.html

(The Review will be translated in English soon)


"Well. Yes." Genevieve
cleared her throat. "I'm not
sure love is always enough."


Comincio subito dal dire che il libro è il secondo di una serie di cui non ho letto il primo volume, ma si può leggere anche da solo perché i personaggi danno tutte le informazioni necessarie ai lettori per capire il loro background.
In Benched seguiamo Victoria e Genevieve. La prima è uno dei nove giudici nella Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti, mentre la seconda è un avvocato (Treccani... Tanto per stare sul sicuro eh?) che si occupa dei diritti della comunità LGBT . Le due donne non solo lavorano assieme, ma sono anche una coppia nella vita privata. E noi le seguiamo mentre si occupano di alcuni casi e mentre la loro relazione arriva ad una possibile rottura a causa del lavoro, che le trova in conflitto, ma non solo.
Tori e Genevieve sono due donne molto diverse, e per questo si trovano ad avere molti problemi di comunicazione.
Se Tori ha da poco fatto coming out, è una persona molto privata ed ha ancora problemi ad andare in giro con la donna che ama, Genevieve considera il fatto che Victoria preferisca mangiare a casa propria e altri piccoli dettagli come il fatto che la sua compagna sia una maniaca del controllo.
Genevieve, d'altra parte, vuole avere tutto. Non solo sul lavoro cerca di fare sia lavoro d'ufficio a testa della HER, ma segue anche dei casi personalmente. Per non parlare poi della vita privata, dove più di una volta, mentre ancora sta con Tori, pensa di tradirla con Penelope, una donna molto attraente e brava nel proprio lavoro.
La rottura si ha quando Victoria e Genevieve si trovano a lavorare sullo stesso caso. Tori pensa che non debbano, perché potrebbe compromettere il risultato. Genevieve quindi si ritira e la loro relazione finisce in fondo ad un burrone. Un burrone davvero poco profondo, visto che fin da subito cercano di rimettere assieme i pezzi!
Posso dire che leggere libri pubblicati da Ylva Publishing mi mancava? Non solo perché sono f/f, ma proprio perché la casa editrice è ottima.
Questo è il primo libro che leggo scritto da Blythe Rippon. Le recensioni su Goodreads sono contrastanti e io non sapevo cosa pensare, quindi mi sono immersa nella lettura. E, se all'inizio Tori e Genevieve non mi hanno toccata per nulla, alla fine mi sono ritrovata a sperare che si rimettessero assieme, perché pur con tutti i problemi che hanno, si vede che si amano profondamente. Solo, come in tutte le coppie, entrambe le donne devono capire che, se vogliono stare insieme, devono arrivare a compromessi.
Penelope alla fine è quella che mi è piaciuta di più. Con molta diplomazia capisce il problema e alla fine sembra anche lei volere la felicità di Tori e Genevieve.
Oltre alla storia d'amore, come ho detto, possiamo seguire alcuni casi a cui le due donne lavorano assieme ai propri team. Io so poco e niente di queste cose, soprattutto parlando di Stati Uniti, ma da quello che ho sentito sembra tutto piuttosto realistico.
Per quanto riguarda la scrittura, invece, non mi ha entusiasmato particolarmente. Anzi, ha rallentato la lettura. Posso dire però di aver imparato nuove parole e quindi sono abbastanza soddisfatta anche di questa parte del romanzo.
Come sempre, io vi consiglio di guardare il catalogo della Ylva Publishing!

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review)
This book is about two very smart, mature women navigating their relationship with each other while also working for LGBT rights in court. I liked the cases they were working on, which go to show that despite equal marriage being legalised in America recently, there's still a lot left for our community to accomplish. I was really interested in the conflict of interest that came up with a lawyer dating a judge, and all the debates they had with each other and their friends about it. And I appreciated the fact that both protagonists were successful adults with a comfortably domestic relationship, instead of a scandalous whirlwind romance.

However, I did have some trouble really connecting with the story. I think a big part of that is that I didn't realise until midway through the book that it was the second in a series, and so I missed out on a lot of backstory. Geneveive and Victoria had a rich and complex history together that I only became aware of in snatches, and not being familiar with this left me without a solid sense of why their relationship was worth fighting for. The scene where Geneveive gets a migraine and wakes up to find Victoria taking care of her was the biggest 'aww, what a good couple' moment for me, but then the focus was on little conflicts and misaligned expectations between them, and I sometimes found myself thinking that maybe they should just break up since they didn't seem to be making each other all that happy.

But there's no doubt that Geneveive and Victoria considered what they have to be worth the trouble, even though I struggled to see it at times, and in the end they resolved things to everyone's satisfaction.

(I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review)

This is a sweet, warmhearted and thoroughly satisfying story about love, friendship, family, the way life gets in the way of your plans, and losing the things you dreamed of only to get what you didn't know you needed. It shows that things don't have to turn out just the way you wanted them to to turn out really well, and that you can find people you love and things you're passionate about just about anywhere if you're prepared to look.

I loved Sam's character. She's kind, funny, brilliant, oblivious and utterly adorkable. Her strengths and weaknesses were two sides of the same coin (she's very smart, a talented medical researcher, a high achiever and proud of it, and willing to sacrifice for those she loves, and at the same time a bit of an intellectual snob, prone to overanalysing everything and she tends to make herself miserable over those she cares for). I related to her a lot, and her complicated feelings for Natalie, Maria, and her mother really resonated. Towards the start of the book, there was a moment where I went "Seriously? Who actually talks like this?", before realising "... I do. I talk like this, with the odd formality and advanced vocabulary that comes out when I'm feeling awkward or especially uninhibited".

If I had one complaint, it's that this book has the very common problem where nobody says the 'b' word. Natalie has always known she likes boys, then discovers she likes girls too, but the word bisexual is never even mentioned (while the words 'lesbian' and 'gay' appear many times throughout the book). And I think it's a bit unfortunate that Natalie - change-her-major-a-million-times, ever-shifting-fashion-sense, probably-never-going-to-settle-down Natalie - was the only character to demonstrate attraction to more than one gender, considering the stereotype of bisexuals as indecisive and unsuited for commitment. I don't want to sound more negative than I really feel, though. I truly appreciated the lack of biphobia, in that Sam was never confused about how Natalie could be genuinely attracted to people of more than one gender or upset with Natalie for dating boys, she was only ever upset that Natalie wasn't dating her.

Overall, I loved it.

I had a different set of expectations going into this story. Given the authors background the nature of the story, I knew for sure I would need to use my dictionary skills to get through the legal jargon. I also expected Tori to be this uptight stick-in-the-mud justice; however, I was pleasantly surprised. Tori and Genevieve make a great couple. Tori seems a bit bland compared to Genevieve, but they balance each other nicely. The beginning was a little slow, which could be because I don't like flashbacks. Nonetheless, I like second chance romances and this story aimed to please.

I was given this ARC by the publisher in exchange for an Honest Review.

What is it with me and stumbling into 2nd books in a series? For the most part, though, I think that once I got into the story this book stood alone very well.

As I said, it's the second book in the series, and it's sort of a, 'what happens after the 'happily ever after'.

It's about Victoria and Genevieve. Victoria is the newest Supreme Court Justice and Genevieve is the head of HER, an organization that takes on LGBT+ cases and argues them, sometimes all the way to the Supreme Court. Couple that with the fact that Genevieve and Victoria are in a relationship, and there are lots of hurdles for the couple in this novel (oh, and another woman in charge of a different LGBT+ group, Penelope, throws a ton more hurdles into the book too).

At first I thought that this romance would be another one where one person is just so horrible, but, that's okay because the other person loves person number 1. Oh, and person number 2 is perfect and that's the only reason the relationship works.

But, thankfully as I got farther into the book I realized that it was a much, much more nuanced plot than that. Phew.

Overall I liked the book and I think when I read the first book in the series that it'll give me an even deeper sense of the backgrounds stuff going on in this book.

That was cool. Like I'm finding a lot of the Ylva books it was a total and utter slow burn, but good.

The reader gets a little bit of the 'after' right at the beginning of the novel and then we go back in Sam's story a little bit. She's the main character and the book, while it did have other characters, mostly revolved around her and her story.

We start with her in her first dorm meeting as a freshman at Yale. She starts as a super introvert with iffy socialization skills. But she meets some people like a girl she likes, Natalie, as well as some other friends too.

We follow her through Semester after Semester (and summers too) as she grows, changes, and such and then we get jerked out of Sam's Academic world and back into the small town of Stowe Vermont where Sam grew up.

That was my favorite part of the novel. Perhaps it was because I live in New England, but I thought that the author did a good job giving the sense of place for Vermont and that part of the novel's slow burn didn't drive me quite as crazy as the beginning part of the novel.

I liked this book. It was a heartwarming story and there were even some mostly proper uses of wicked in it too.

I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of Ylva Publishing.

This book makes it not easy to get a feeling for the characters. They are rather stereotypical and... well... If you introduce a character (Samantha by the way) as socially awkward, then show her that way? I don't think of her as socially awkward. The big and many time jumps didn't help either.

After finishing I still don't know why Sam is in love with Natalie. Seriously, why? It didn't make sense and there wasn't any chemistry between them.

Part two contains the changes for Sam - I seriously thought the whole book would be about them and what'll happen after dealing/learning to live with them, but the reader experiences Sam's college life, too. Anyway, this part was better. The characters were interesting (I especially love Pauly) and Sam herself makes more sense in my eyes.

It still feels kinda unfinished. Not because of the open end, but because there were some things introduced but nothing really came out of it (Sam's poetry for example).

If the description would have been different, maybe I wouldn't have been as bored while reading. Because what you read there? That's the book. It's more of a summary than a description, I think.

Disclaimer: I was provided by Ylva Publishing with a free copy in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.½

There is something about lesfic stories featuring lady lawyers and politicians that I find so fascinating. Is it the power they wield or the power suits they wear? :) Or the fact that their chosen profession is one of the most conservative? A president [b:Madam President|1038936|Madam President|Blayne Cooper|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1362939993s/1038936.jpg|1025297], a mayor [b:Conservative Affairs|18406461|Conservative Affairs|Riley Scott|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400939089s/18406461.jpg|26041571], a congresswoman [b:Love is Enough|23205358|Love is Enough|Cindy Rizzo|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1411708281s/23205358.jpg|42749156], and now..a Supreme Court justice. May the list never end!

Victoria Willoughby, the youngest and newest member of the US Supreme Court court, gets a possibly once-in-a-lifetime chance to decide on one of the most momentous and contentious issues that has been brought before it--the constitutionality of the banning of same-sex marriage. Unlike the other justices, Victoria just may have a personal stake in the ruling--she is rumored to be a lesbian. The lead counsel arguing against the government is Genevieve Fornier--out and proud, and very distracting.

This is a good example of a believable fictionalization of a historical event. We get a sneak peek into the inner workings of the Supreme Court and the intriguing politics and strategizing behind court decisions. The legalese is layman-friendly. No mass info-dumps either. There was just enough tension and excitement to elevate this to a legal-thriller status.

The romance is also well done...for the most part. Their first intimate scene together is one of tamest (in terms of word usage) yet one of the sexiest in recent memory. There is some attempt at suspense but it is not very well developed and ended up pretty much a plot device for the romantic subplot, which dominated the last third of the book. Unfortunately, this is also the weakest part. When the ladies get together after the Supreme Court decision, it was all rather smooth sailing--too smooth. I can probably forgive Victoria's overnight change of heart and personality from being a cold, calculating, single-minded, goal-driven, risk-averse over-achiever to a warm, funny, and fun-loving adventurer who she hasn't been in 20 years. But all the intrigue and gossip surrounding her being a lesbian just vanished into thin air after she very publicly came out--I was expecting the opposite. The conservative pundits would have had a field day with that, at the very least. She should have been inundated by press and paparazzi. But what we got was a psycho. Oh well, at least it offended one person. :) In other words, it was too easy. The plot could have used more anxiety and angst to spice things up a bit.

Still, this is a very good first effort. A enjoyable page-turner from the first page to the last.

4.5 stars