Mia Vincy

I'm not entirely sure how to rate this book - I'm choosing 2 stars because my complaints outweigh any positives.

What I liked: the premise, a couple, in a marriage of convenience (like a TRUE MOC) between Cassandra and Joshua, have been living apart since their wedding night. Joshua has been living in the city and Cassandra has been stationed in her family's country estate. They are forced to share their home for the first time when Cassandra needs help from her duchess grandmother to plan for her sister's coming out. While living apart, Joshua has been having affairs with widows. Both MCs have been dealing with traumas that inform their behavior. I like books that explore a couple coming back together or a couple that is one in appearances only but must now navigate a way into a different status.

What didn't work as well: for me, the writing was kind of bad and relied on distracting, often unserious dialogue between the MCs that did not advance my understanding of the characters. So, flimsy back-and-forth one-liners were used in place of developing a relationship between the MCs. This is a problem I often run into when I read recent romances. I just do not connect with this kind of writing at all. There were also a few times Joshua called Cassandra a colonizer or claimed she was colonizing his space when she moved into his city house. . .

By the end of the story, I did not feel I knew these characters enough to say if I understood why they should be together - there were heavy moments but I felt so disconnected from these people. The jump from not liking one another to in love was so sudden I couldn't believe it. I'm going to try another by this author with hopes it works out better!… (plus d'informations)

This book contains lot of great ideas. It approaches the virginal heroine/virile hero dynamic so common to historical romance in a novel way that emphasizes female agency and brings attention to the disgusting way virginity is often fetishized/venerated in romance. It has a lot of interesting female characters. I love how the female lead schemes and plots for the good of those around her while hiding her true self. It would be really interesting to see how she learns to open up...
If the male lead was actually the right person to make that happen. But he just doesn't have anything to offer her. While the female lead keeps saying things to make the audience understand that she loves him because he's kind, he never does much to support that impression in the text. In the beginning of the book, she says he makes her feel safe, but she just had an encounter with him where he spoke over every sentence she said and categorically refused to listen to her request for him to help her escape a forced marriage because he always assumes the worst of her. She says he's "all heart," but he's never kind to anyone who is not a close relative or a woman he's attracted to. Even with that select group, his kindness feels very self-righteous. His actions are driven not so much by "heart" as by a strict moral code that drives him to disparage and dismiss those he sees as failing to live up to it--including the heroine. Because even though she is demonstrably far more kind to others than the male lead ever is, he thinks she schemes too much. Note that the reason that she schemes is because, as a woman under her father's thumb, she doesn't have many other options open to her. I don't know why he thinks he has any ground on which to judge her.
To me, the male lead never makes up for how awful he is in the beginning of the book. He eventually realizes how altruistic the female lead is and attempts to make up materially for how cruel he is, but she forgives him so easily that he is never forced to address emotionally how needlessly cruel and judgemental he has been to her. I'm not sure he even apologizes for being wrong about her. The worst part is that at the end of the novel, the female lead eventually starts to worry about whether she's good enough for him, and he affirms his love for her and calls her a "fool" for not seeing it, all without acknowledging how all the things he said and did contributed to that mindset. His total lack of emotional awareness makes it even more difficult to believe that he's "all heart."
Although the book is in many ways an attempt to circumvent problematic sexual norms in historical romance, the two leads' sexual dynamic has a lot of problems. Even though the male lead is set up to be the female lead's rival, she completely outdoes him at every turn in terms of kindness, intelligence, and bravery. The only time he ever gets the better of her is when they're having sex, and he's infuriatingly smug about it. He seems to think that having had sex with the female lead gives him special power over or insight into her and is often uncomfortably sexually aggressive with her. It gets to the point where when he professes a firm belief in women's bodily autonomy, it almost feels out of character.
The male lead isn't particularly heartless or cruel as male leads in romance novels go, but his lack of kindness and borderline sexist behavior run so counter to the themes of the novel that it became nearly unreadable for me. Even if there's a reason for it, completely talking over a woman so that she can't speak reads as sexism. Assuming that a woman is out to catch a husband and disparaging her for it in a society where women are socially obligated to marry reads as sexism. Demanding that women live up to a standard of behavior that is only possible for privileged men reads as sexism. And I'm supposed to believe that this man will give the female lead relief from a sexist world? He's part of that world.… (plus d'informations)

Confession: I actually started this last night, not Monday.

And then stayed up too late.

And then woke up, read it, worked, then snuck off to finish it instead of working.

UHHHHMAAHHHGAHHHH

So allow me to say something superlative but untrue, instead of an actual review, even by my standards.

NOTHING gets me like an entitled (I mean this in a not terrible way) heart of gold hero loving the prickly as hell & challenging heroine.

Nothing.

(But... What about the tortured hero and the one who never....NOTHING...

Wait... What about the forever pining hero and...NOT.A.THING

Except... what about the shy hero who....I SAID NOTHING.

)

This book is freaking wonderful, ok, let's not split hairs.… (plus d'informations)