CBR17 Book 18: "Tress of the Emerald Sea" by Brandon Sanderson

Page count: 479 pages

Audio book length: 12 hrs 27 mins

Rating: 4.5 stars

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Celestial (there is a big moon and several stars on the cover)

What if in The Princess Bride, Buttercup didn't sit at home and mourn for Westley when he was captured by pirates, but instead went off to try to rescue him? Of course, that would mean Buttercup had any agency at all in either the novel or the film, and she really doesn't. But if Buttercup was a young woman named Tress, from a barren and fairly desolate island, who washes windows at the duke's mansion and collects cups, with the only thing making her life worthwhile being her friendship with the duke's son (who pretends to be a gardener), and one day, Charlie, her best friend (who she's only recently discovered that she's also in love with) is taken away by his father to be married off (a poor window washer girl is not a suitable match for him)? Charlie promises to be so dreadfully boring to every suitable bride he meets that no one will want to marry him, and every time is rejected by another bride, he will write to her and send her another cup from his travels. 

However, after some months, the letters stop coming. Then the duke returns, but Charlie isn't with him. Charlie has been kidnapped by the Sorceress, and it doesn't seem like anyone cares except Tress. First, she needs to figure out how to get off the island (no one but the duke's family is ever allowed to leave). On the first ship she travels on, she meets a talking rat, who she takes with her when the ship is attacked by pirates. It's important to note that in this world, while there are ships and long voyages, the oceans are made up of spores that react very violently to the presence of any liquids. Very occasionally, the spore currents still for a time, and it's possible for brave, or exceedingly foolish, individuals to walk along on top of the spores. This is how Tress gets from the attacked ship onto the pirate vessel, where she gradually befriends more of the crew and works her way up in rank, despite the misgivings of the blood-thirsty pirate captain. 

Tress isn't entirely sure how she's going to help the motley crew of pirates from becoming exploited by their captain, and persuade them that they really want to assist her in travelling across the Crimson Sea to the Midnight Sea (the two most dangerous areas on the planet), and face the terrifying Socreress to rescue the boy she loves. But she knows that if she gives up, Charlie has no one coming for him, and that is unacceptable to her.

This is an adventure story with a plucky heroine, who keeps succeeding against all odds, sometimes because she just won't quit.While Tress has had a sheltered and rather uneventful life until she decides to leave the safety of her home to go off and rescue Charlie, she's not stupid, and her determination to get to him makes her face challenges that would make others quake. Occasionally, her lack of experience also makes her less afraid of dangers than she probably should be, since she just doesn't realise what the consequences of the potential threats. She's also kind-hearted and determined to help those who show her kindness along the way, even if it might delay her ultimate goal of getting to the Sorceress.

This is the first of the four secret projects that Brandon Sanderson announced that he wrote when he suddenly had a lot of extra downtime during the Pandemic. While most of us binged TV shows and perfected our sourdough loaves, Sanderson apparently wrote four entire novels, in addition to all the work he was already contracted for. The man is a machine! This led to probably the biggest Kickstarter campaign in history. Sanderson started writing this story for his wife, after wondering what The Princess Bride could have been like if the heroine wasn't just a passive player, having the plot happen to her. 

I didn't have the finances to get all four secret projects in hardback (not only did the books themselves cost quite a lot, but the shipping to Norway was incredibly expensive), so I only got Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, because these two books were the ones that looked the prettiest and most interesting to me. I did get digital and audio copies of all the other books, though, which allowed me to listen to parts of this in audiobook as well. 

Most of Sanderson's many many novels fit into a larger fictional universe called the Cosmere. That means that a lot of his books are vaguely interconnected. Since this book fits into the Cosmere, but there are more than twenty other works that come before it, I had this grand plan last year, to do a re-read of the Sanderson novels I had read (most of them a very long time ago now) and catch up on all the ones I hadn't read, so I'd be able to properly enjoy the various secret projects, and not be confused by the references. Sadly, this failed almost at the first hurdle, when I had finished the brilliant Mistborn, and then just couldn't get past the opening chapters of The Well of Ascencion, the next book in the series. Then this got selected as the February read in The Dark Corner, my real life book club, and it became clear that I was just going to have to ignore references to events or characters from other Cosmere books. 

One such character is Hoid, who narrates the story of Tress and Charlie to us readers. He has apparently appeared in a bunch of Sanderson's novels (some of which I have read, if the wiki article I read is correct - and I don't see why it wouldn't be) in various different guises. In this book, he's a cabin boy who has been cursed by The Sorceress (who is also a character from the wider Cosmere universe) becaue of a bet. He speaks and behaves nonsensically for much of the story because of this curse. Some of the members in my bookclub found the way the story was told (Hoid frequently breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader) incredibly annoying. The 2-3 people who didn't like the book cited Hoid's storytelling style and all three felt it wanted to be Pratchett, but didn't succeed. 

Most people, however, really liked the book, and since this was our February choice, we had a very interesting discussion about whether this could be classed as a romance, or whether it was more accurately a love story. The general consensus was that Tress' love for Charlie is completely central to the plot, it's the force that drives her to change her life and leave the island, it's what keeps her going even when things seem almost impossible, and that the book wouldn't work without the love story at its centre. We also agreed that if the book had been sold to us as a great romance, we would probably have been disappointed. 

Personally, I didn't find Hoid all that annoying, and very much like when I was reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, I decided to just enjoy the story on its own terms, and ignore any references that went over my head. Knowing that this was at least in part inspired by The Princess Bride (one of my favourite films, and books, I had fun seeing the many ways in which the story resembled, or subverted the plot of that story. 

As always, Sanderson's world building and approach to magic systems is fantastic, and even the ones who didn't like the book that much had to admit that the oceans of spores idea was great. If anything, there was quite a bit of grumbling because the book claimed there were twelve different kinds of spores, and we only got to learn about five of them in-story. The characters were interesting, and even the Pirate Captain, who by some could be seen as villainous, had very clear motivations and it was made obvious why she might have chosen to act as she did. Some of the bookclub members highlighted her as one of their favourite characters,

Reading Sanderson again did remind me that his writing has always worked for me, and gave me further motivation to actually continue my "Reading the Cosmere" project this year. I'm not going to try to give myself a set time limit this time, that clearly did NOT work, and he has such a big back catalogue of mostly very long books, but I do want to revisit some of the ones I read in the past, and continue the various series. The people who love Sanderson, love him SO much. I'm trying to focus on quality over quantity in my reading now, and not get freaked out if I don't get to read a set number of books per year, but rather focus on the things I read being enjoyable.

Finally, I wanted to end this review by mentioning how utterly gorgeous my Kickstarter-funded hardback is. It is illustrated throughout, with some beatiful drawings, and, as I discovered as I got further through the book, colour coded to which of the seas Tress finds herself at the time. When she travels the Emerald sea, the chapter headings and page numbers are in a beautiful green, when she travels into the Crimson sea, the colours change to red, and then to inky black when she crosses into the dreaded Midnight sea. Having such a pretty edition of the book makes the exorbitant cost of shipping sting slightly less. 

Judging a book by its cover: My hardback is a lovely, clothbound book with different textures for the patterns of the various elements of the cover. As far as I can tell, most of the editions of this book feature Tress and some varation on a giant moon on the cover, but I think this is one of the prettiest versions. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR17 Book 17: "The Wedding Party" by Jasmine Guillory

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Event

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Food or drink

Maddie and Theo are both best friends with Alexa (from The Wedding Date). Despite what the blurb tries to tell you, they are not enemies, they just dislike each other because of some unfortunate first impressions. Maddie thinks Theo is a pompous nerd who looks down on her for her career choice, while Theo thinks Maddie is shallow, fashion-obsessed and mean. After a night out, they drunkenly kiss each other and end up having sex, and very soon they are hooking up every chance they get (including making really bad excuses to see each other). They don't want anyone to find out about it, however, because they don't want Alexa to start match-making while she's busy planning her own wedding. Both agree that it's a temporary thing that will come to a natural end once Alexa's wedding is over, and they stop having to spend so much time together (they are both in the wedding party).

Both characters are absolute idiots when it comes to being honest with themselves about their feelings, and neither of them wants to confess their growing affection for the other, scared that because of their initial antipathy, the other one will reject them. So they keep spending their evenings together, eating SO MUCH takeaway pizza (seriously, it's ridiculous) and ending up in bed together. They are sure they are being very sneaky and that no one suspects a thing, when in fact, every single person who spends time with them (including Alexa) is fully aware of what is going on, and just waiting for them to mutually realise that they are perfect for one another. 

This was a fun read and reminded me that there are a bunch of books in this series that I own, but haven't ever got around to reading. This is why reading challenges are good - they force me to look through my TBR and my many, many owned, but unread books to rediscover stuff I bought years and years ago and completely forgot because there are always so many other shiny books out there to distract me. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really wish they'd used black for the whole title, instead of yellow for part of it, since the yellow against the bright purple background is much harder to read this way. Otherwise, it's a fairly unobjectionable cover. It features the protagonists drinking champagne, so I could use it for my reading challenge. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 16: "Scythe & Sparrow" by Brynne Weaver

Page count: 416 pages

Audio book length: 11 hrs 36 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Transportation

Doctor Fionn Kane is doing just fine in the little Nebraska town he retreated to after leaving his promising surgical career and ex-fiancee behind. He doesn't really want anything to do with the past-times of either of his brothers and is keeping his head down, running and working out when he's not working in his small medical clinic or the hospital. He also crochets. Then a beautiful woman with a severe leg injury ends up nearly unconscious on the floor of his clinic, asking him for help before she passes out. Fionn doesn't realise that despite his attempts to live a calm and uneventful life, chaos has just found him.

Rose Evans has worked at Silveria Circus for over a decade. She has a fortune telling booth, reading tarot cards for paying customers, and also rides her motorcycle every evening in death-defying stunts. She's also has a very particular interest in botany, and as the Sparrow, she has provided many a woman with the means to incapacitate or kill an abusive partner. Normally, she doesn't do any of the killing herself, but when an obviously terrified woman comes to her for a reading, and Rose is able to figure out where the family lives, she decides to take matters (and a baseball bat) into her own hands, to rid the family of their abusive husband/father. Except Rose seriously underestimates the rage and strength of the man she attacks, and ends up with a badly broken leg before she manages to jam some cocktail sticks in the guy's eye, giving her enough time to escape on her motorcycle. She locates the local clinic, desperate to find something for the pain, and passes out shortly after the handsome doctor finds her.

A circus performer with a broken leg can't do her job, so the travelling circus leaves Rose and her RV in Nebraska, planning to pick her up once she's had time to heal. On crutches, after the complicated break, Rose isn't able to mount the stairs to her RV. Fionn has a spare room in his house and surprises himself by inviting the intriguing woman to stay with him until she's had time to recover. Fionn is used to depriving himself of the things he truly desires, so staying away from Rose, his patient, should be fine, right?

Readers of the rest of Brynne Weaver's Ruinous Love trilogy, will have already met Fionn and Rose in Butcher & Blackbird (when Ronan and Sloane show up unexpectedly requiring medical help they can't really get from a hospital) and in Leather & Lark, where the final events left things looking pretty critical for Rose (spoiler: she doesn't die). Plot-wise, the events of this book start a while before Ronan and Sloane show up, and continues as a sequel to both previous books, so the readers can discover how Rose is pulled back from death's door. 

Having read the previous two books, I felt like I already had an idea of who Fionn and Rose were as characters, but it was nevertheless fun to see them more deeply developed. The reveal that Fionn crochets in his spare time, along with a bunch of small-town grannies was a very fun one. Unlike his brothers, Fionn has chosen to heal people rather than to unalive them, but he still feels immense guilt for the role he played in the demise of their abusive father, and has never felt able to confide in his brothers about this. Rose, on the other hand, seems to have quite a death toll that she facilitated by giving other women the means to be free of their abusers. It's only in this book that she decides to try to take a more active hand in murdering violent and unpleasant men, and because she is very impulsive, it rarely goes the way she plans. Poor Fionn has to get her out of trouble more than once. 

Rating the books of the trilogy, Leather & Lark is my least favourite, while Butcher & Blackbird remains my absolute favourite (none of the other books have made me that obsessed), putting Scythe & Sparrow firmly in the middle. Of the three, this is probably the book with the most mutual pining (while Ronan pines for years for Sloane, she's pretty oblivious to all of it), and our protagonists are very attracted to one another from the start, but not willing, or in some cases able, to act on it. In the last third of this book, Fionn and Rose are separated for much of it, and as a result, correspond in letters. As a result, I would probably say it's the most romantic of the three. 

This book has the same narrators as Leather & Lark and is once more a dual narration. I really like this kind of storytelling, and since the narrators also voiced Lark and Lachlan in the previous book, there is some nice continuity. 

In one of the two epilogues to this story, Ms. Weaver gives some hints towards what she's likely to be writing about next. It seems to be a spin-off of sorts from these books, and by now, I am enjoying her storytelling enough that I'll probably get the next one too.

Judging a book by its cover: I genuinely don't know why there is a scythe featured on the cover, as far as I recall, one is never used by any of the characters, protagonists or antagonists, and therefor it seems a bit unnecessary. All the other elements that we see in yellow and orange on the cover at least feature in the book at some point. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 15: "The King's Messenger" by Susanna Kearsley

Page count: 512 pages

Rating: 4 stars

StoryGraph Easy Reading Challenge 2025: All Alone - Read a stand-alone book

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for this ARC. My opinions are my own. 

It is 1613 and Prince Henry, James I's eldest son and heir has tragically died. Rumours whisper that it might not have been by natural causes. Queen Anna is distraught, and King James is determined to punish the guilty. 

Andrew Logan is one of the king's messengers and he's tasked with going to Scotland to apprehend Sir David Moray, Prince Henry's closest companion, and bring him safely to London to face 'trial'. Logan will not be travelling alone, along for the journey will also be an experienced scribe, Lawrence Westaway, who will write down anything that Moray says or does during the trip. Because Lawrence is elderly and of ill health, Westaway's daughter Phoebe will also accompany them. Complicating matters somewhat is the secret Logan needs to keep from everyone around him. He has the Second Sight, and can occasionally catch glimpses of things that will happen. In a time where the least unusual behaviour could have you accused of witchcraft, Logan dares not tell Phoebe that he can see her father's poor health will shortly lead to his death. 

While the queen is mourning her son, she doesn't necessarily believe Sir David is responsible for his death. She wants him brought safely to her so she can speak with him, Logan's orders are to bring him directly to the king. Logan suspects that by arresting Moray, he may be complicit in the man's demise. It doesn't help matters that Logan and Phoebe don't exactly get along. She believes him to be a brutish and uncivilised man, swayed by the words of others in her acquaintance. He believes her to be a judgemental snob who has coldly rejected any of his overtures of friendship since they were younger. 

The journey from Edinburgh to London is long, however, and the travellers spend a lot of time in each other's company. Logan arrests Sir David as his ship from France arrives in the port in Leith, and on their return journey to London, the group are also joined by a young stablehand who idolises Logan and wants to become a royal messenger like him. Sir David is obviously grieving the loss of Prince Henry deeply and it becomes obvious to everyone in the group almost immediately that he is an innocent man, and that taking him to London would be to commit an act of injustice. Their return to London will also be dangerous, as one of Sir David's Scottish kinsmen is pursuing them with a large band of his soldiers, determined to spirit his cousin away to safety.

Searching my blog, it turns out I haven't actually read a single of Kearsley's novels since 2014 when I finished The Firebird. It surprised me that it's been so long, I remember the ones I read quite well and liked all three. She writes very well-researched and engaging historical fiction, sometimes with a light supernatural element, such as Andrew Logan's occasional glimpses into the future in this book. Based on the plot descriptions of this book online, I was expecting more of a suspense book, possibly something involving espionage - which is not the case. In some ways, it's a road trip novel, only the mode of transportation is horses, and it takes a considerable amount of time riding from Edinburgh to London, even when keeping a brisk pace because rebellious Scotsmen are in pursuit. I actually preferred this quieter story to the one I thought would be happening, so in my case, it worked out fine.

In several of the Kearsley books I read in the past, there are two parallell storylines, one set in the past, one in the present day. Here, it's all in the early 1600s, chiefly 1613, but several of the POV characters, like Sir David and Queen Anna have flashbacks to previous events, mostly concerning Prince Henry. There is absolutely romantic tension between Logan and Phoebe, but it's not exactly a sweeping love story that dominates the plot. It becomes clear to the reader (who gets to read the POV of both characters) that a lot of their mutual distrust and animosity comes from misunderstandings early on in their acquaintance (and in Phoebe's case, that she's listened to people who spread malicious gossip, some of which is clearly untrue). 

I was also worried, when I realised how much of this book deals with grief of losing a son (Sir David may not have fathered Prince Henry, but he cleary loved the young man as a son, probably much more than King James ever did), which since I became a mother is one of my biggest nightmares. Sir David and Queen Anna's flashbacks were sad, but thankfully there was nothing to emotionally destroy me.

The King's Messenger is out this week in the US. In the rest of the world, it's apparently been out since August 2024, so there are already lots of readers out there that share my view on the quality of this book. It was a lovely read, and made me determined to check out more of Kearsley's back catalogue before another decade passes.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 14 : "Two Friends in Marriage" by Jackie Lau

Page count: 233 pages

Rating: 3 stars

Disclaimer! This was an ARC sent to me by the author. My opinions are my own. 

During the Covid pandemic, it becomes very obvious to both Evan Mok and his friend Jane Yin how lonely they both are and how much they wish they had someone to share their lives with. They agree that if they are both still single after Jane's thirty-third birthday, they will get married and buy a house together. By the time Jane's birthday has passed, neither of them is in a romantic relationship, and both have pretty much given up on finding long-term happiness with anyone. So sticking to their pact seems like a good idea.

They pretend that they have been dating for a while, to avoid awkward questions from Evan's family. Jane doesn't really expect any questions from her side of the family. Her mother died of cancer when she was little (by turning thirty-three, Jane has now lived longer than her mother ever did), and once her father remarried, he seemed to entirely lose interest in Jane and her life. He claims he's too busy to make it to the wedding and she doesn't have much of a connection to her stepmother or younger half-siblings. So one of the benefits to Jane in marrying Evan is that she will actually have in-laws who seem to care. 

Once they find a house they like, their quiet life together seems to be going very well. Of course, it wouldn't be a proper marriage of convenience story if the two didn't start catching feelings for one another. Evan is bisexual and Jane is one of the friends he's known the longest. He never felt any attraction towards her before they got married and moved in together, but now he keeps having to fight feelings he's sure his quiet wife can't return. Jane, for her part, is asexual and has been happily celibate for nearly a decade. So she's even more surprised when she starts having pants feelings for her husband. Both are worried that they are going to hurt/upset/freak out their significant other by confessing these feelings - oh noes!

I don't think I've read a single Jackie Lau book that I didn't at least in parts enjoy, but some of her books are absolutely less to my taste than others. This is the third book in the Weddings with the Moks series (only one sibling left to pair up, now) and it's fine, but nothing more. While I like Evan's parents (this is now the third book where they have appeared), I didn't really connect with Evan or Jane, and as a result, I didn't really care what happened to them. There was nothing really drawing me into the story, and if this hadn't been an ARC that I felt a responsibility to finish and review, I possibly would have DNF'd it. 

It probably doesn't help that a couple of weeks before reading this, I read another "marriage pact" romance that worked for me on every single level, and which I had trouble putting down. In a Rush by Kate Canterbary had characters I adored, a great supporting cast, and a storyline that engaged me and kept me wanting to spend more time with them. Evan and Jane are both very aware that they're not very exciting people, and that seems to come across in the writing. Obviously, perfectly ordinary people deserve romance and their happy endings too, I just needed something more from this book to keep me entertained. 

I'm still looking forward to the final book in the series, hopefully Mok brother number 4's romance will be more to my tastes.

CBR17 Book 13: "Animal Farm" by George Orwell

Page count: 95 pages

Audio book length: 3 hrs 3 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Books Bingo 25: Banned Book

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Cover featuring an animal

On Manor Farm, somewhere in England, an old boar gathers all the animals in the barn and makes a powerful speech about how animals suffer at the hands of humans and should rise up and take power for themselves. Shortly after his death, the animals of Manor Farm do just that - they violently fight back when Farmer Jones and his farmhands try to control them and chase the farmer, his wife and all the other humans on the farm away. All animals will be equal, everyone will contribute to the farm to the best of their abilities, walking on two legs and using collars or human attire is forbidden, and no one will use the farmhouse anymore. The pigs manage to teach themselves to read and write and seven lofty commandments for the governing of Animal Farm are painted on the barn walls. Things seem very idyllic for the animals at first, but it doesn't take long before some of the animals take a more prominent role in the rule and governing of the farm, and as a result, decide that they deserve more than their allotted share of the resources. 

This is where I have to confess to never having read Animal Farm until this year when we're teaching it to the tenth-graders. Unlike Et dukkehjem, which I have read and taught a bunch of times, we never used this book on the curriculum before, and because I like to read for escapism and to avoid traumatic and depressing reading experiences, I've tried to stay away from George Orwell's novels. While it's not a long book, only a novella really, an allegory stuffed full of political satire isn't the easiest thing for rather sheltered Norwegian tenth-graders to process, and quite a few of our pupils are having a tough time with it. Of course, when we planned the curriculum for this year in August, none of us English teachers had any idea how much more relevant it was going to become (thanks for that, America), although the machinations of the pigs seem almost quaint compared to the geo-political nightmare taking place in the United States right now. 

I had to read up on Soviet/Russian history in the 20th Century after reading this, so as better to understand all the things the book alludes to, to then teach it to the kids. The ones who are generally interested in history and current events, seem to be getting a lot more out of the book than the others. Some of them are questioning why they have to read a book about a bunch of animals - hence the need to try to tell them the real-world events that inspired the book. It's going to be interesting to see what they think once we finish the book, it's not exactly a fun or heartwarming tale - rather than a depressing dystopian fable. 

I'm glad I read it, but it's deeply tragic that not only have we not learned anything from history and books such as this, but power-hungry despots with seemingly no grasp of actual decency are being allowed to do much worse as we speak. Poor Orwell is probably rolling in his grave. 

Judging a book by its cover: Red and black, very Communist colour scheme and the entire layout of the cover looks like a propaganda poster of some kind. The fateful windmill is front and centre, along with a slightly sinister-looking pig. There are countless editions of this book, and just as many different cover designs. I kind of like this one. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 12: "Deep End" by Ali Hazelwood

Page count: 464 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Water words

Warning! Mild spoilers for some plot points later in the review. 

Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling, both with her academic subjects at Stanford and her diving. While physically fully recovered from a bad accident a year ago, Scarlett has a block that prevents her from even attempting the type of dive that had her hospitalised and having to go through several surgeries to fix her broken body. She needs to get her grades up if she wants to get into med school, and she has reluctantly agreed to go to therapy to see if she can get past the mental block that is hindering her diving but doesn't really feel as if it's working. 

Lucas Blomquist is a world champion swimmer and has won multiple Olympic medals. He's one of Stanford's top aquatic athletes and the loyal boyfriend of Scarlett's diving teammate Penelope. When Lucas and Penelope quietly break up, however, Penelope drunkenly suggests that Lucas and Scarlett hook up, because "they're into the same thing", BDSM. While Lucas is apparently a great, loyal and caring boyfriend, sexually he and Penelope just aren't compatible, because Pen isn't into kink at all. Scarlett, however, is. After a few weeks of extreme awkwardness around both Pen and Lucas, she and Lucas actually communicate and discover that their kinks seem to be extremely well-matched. Scarlett is wary about starting anything with her friend's ex, but once she and Lucas spend more time together, she can't really help herself, and they agree on a mutually beneficial arrangement. 

For reasons known best to herself, Pen doesn't really want to publically break up with Lucas, so Scarlett and Lucas can't really be public with their hook-ups. Soon they are nevertheless spending a lot of time together, working for the same professor on a biology project, and getting more and more obsessed with one another. Scarlett's history with PTSD and her self-esteem issues make it difficult for her to trust anyone. Her growing friendship with Penelope also makes her unsure about her relationship with Lucas, are they really as over each other as they claim?

I understand that Ali Hazelwood's books aren't for everyone and that her writing style can be annoying. By now, it's becoming obvious that to me, her writing works perfectly for me, and with each new thing she publishes, I like her even more. I also love that as she becomes more successful as a writer, she publishes stories she's clearly wanted to write for a long time. She gets criticised for writing the same story over and over, and yes, she does have a tendency to feature huge, hulking guys and vulnerable petite heroines. Would I love for her to have a towering, Amazonian heroine and a short king hero in the future? Absolutely. But she's been changing up her formula more and more. In the last two years, she's written YA, and paranormal romance (book 2 is out in October!) and exploration of kink is getting more prominent in some of her books. I've seen some people say this is her best book to date, but I still think I prefer Not in Love and Love, Theoretically. Part of that is because Scarlett and Lucas both felt so young (this is definitely New Adult) and part of it is because of Penelope. 

Over on Threads, the algorithm has clearly realised that I like Ali Hazelwood, so I see a lot of posts about her writing, especially this new book. Penelope is clearly a divisive character, and without spoiling too much, her actions towards the end of the book are objectively shitty towards both Scarlett and Lucas. A lot of people seem to think that what she does is unforgivable and to some, her mere presence in the book, apparently ruined it for them. I liked that Hazelwood introduced a close female friendship between two characters who were both rather messed up (Scarlett and Penelope both have their issues), and as a result, mistakes were eventually made. 

I think that over the course of the story, some of Penelope's demands on both Scarlett and Lucas' time were a bit unreasonable, and personally, I would have told her to bugger off occasionally, but as they are written, that is not something Scarlett or Lucas would do. Scarlett's choice to eventually forgive Penelope is one of the things that made me like this book more. Female characters so easily fall into archetypes. The bitchy, sabotaging ex is such a stereotype in a lot of romances. Penelope is so much more than that. She is genuinely a great and supportive friend to Scarlett. She's happy that Scarlett and Lucas find a connection she wasn't able to have with him. When a series of events mean that her life is less than great, she says and does some pretty awful things. Does that mean that she's an utterly irredeemable character? Once again, these characters are young. They are in their early 20s, only starting out in life. I respect and like Hazelwood more for including a complicated friendship dynamic in the book and for letting Penelope be more multi-faceted than the standard jealous ex-girlfriend trope.

Scarlett is another of Hazelwood's vulnerable and skittish heroines. Because she used to be effortlessly good at a lot of things, like professional diving and academia, it's very difficult for her to adapt to life becoming more challenging. She has PTSD from the behaviour of her emotionally abusive and controlling father, which makes her very uneasy around most men. She has a great relationship with her stepmother, who is an important part of the great supporting cast of this novel. Scarlett doesn't really believe she deserves good things, so in her mind, her relationship with her perfect boyfriend specimen Lucas Blomquist is never going to be a lasting thing. Their hook-ups are only supposed to be temporary, and as she keeps catching deeper feelings, she struggles to accept them and own up to them.

Thankfully, Lucas really does seem to be the perfect man, almost annoyingly so. I really would have liked for him to have some sort of flaw, but no, he's understanding, and supportive, if a bit of a perfectionist, and from the descriptions of him, he looks like a mix between Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Phelps. I don't think Hazelwood has written a single book where the hero doesn't fall first, and that is also the case here. Because Lucas is also more emotionally mature, he is able to acknowledge his own feelings, while patiently waiting for Scarlett to catch up, giving her time and space to join him in being head over heels.

Lucas is also Swedish. The previous time I read a novel with a Swedish protagonist, Olivia Dade's Ship Wrecked, one recurring term of endearment drove me nuts and it annoyed me enough that I couldn't rate the book more than 4 stars. In this, there are some uses of Swedish, but they are actually accurate and suitable for the situation, so I wasn't bothered by them. The way Hazelwood describes Lucas and his brothers and the place they come from felt authentic to me as a Scandinavian. I suspect that the audiobook will be harder for me to get through, though, unless they have an actual Swede narrating Lucas' parts. 

As far as I can tell, not in any way being into kinky stuff (happily Asexual and celibate, over here), all the BDSM stuff covered in this book, from Lucas and Scarlett's lists when they compare what they are into, and throughout their relationship, is very respectfully and accurately described. The spice level seems to be getting a bit higher with each new Hazelwood, but I still think that a lot of readers would find this relatively mild, comparatively speaking. It's certainly not anything like, say, Christina Lauren's early romances (they've gone a lot more tame now) or anything by Kit Rocha, or Katee Robert. 

Judging a book by its cover: If my Threads feed is anything to go by, a lot of people have been clutching their pearls over the level of spice/smut in this book. With a cover like this, what are you expecting? Those are clearly not the hands of people who are just waving at each other. Personally, I love that there are no people on the cover, that way I'm free to picture the characters exactly as I want inside my head. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read