CBR15 Book 77: "Two Wrongs Make a Right" by Chloe Liese

Page count: 351 pages

Rating. 3.5 stars

Official book description:

Jamie Westenberg and Bea Wilmot have nothing in common except a meet-disaster and the mutual understanding that they couldn't be more wrong for each other. But when the people closest to them play Cupid and trick them into going on a date, Jamie and Bea realize they have something else in common after all—an undeniable need for revenge.   Soon their plan is in Fake date obnoxiously and convince the meddlers they’re madly in love. Then, break up spectacularly and dash everyone's hopes, putting an end to the matchmaking madness once and for all.   To convince everyone that they’ve fallen for each other, Jamie and Bea will have to nail the performance of their lives. But as their final act nears and playing lovers becomes easier than not, they begin to What if Cupid’s arrow wasn’t so off the mark? And what if two wrongs do make a right?

This is an opposites attract contemporary romance, that I've also seen marketed as enemies to lovers. The protagonists are never enemies, they just really dislike each other a lot the first time they meet, and said evening keeps going more and more disastrously wrong until they find themselves locked in a cupboard together and kind of feel like kissing each other. Both Jamie "West" Westenberg and Beatrice "Bea" Wilmot are single by choice. West suffers from anxiety and is the only pediatrician in a family of successful and highly ambitious surgeons (his family, even his Mum, are all awful). His ex-girlfriend chose a position working for his father over him, so now he's just a workaholic so he can't be set up on dates. Bea's former boyfriend turned out to be a controlling, emotionally abusive d*ck, and she doesn't really feel comfortable telling her twin sister Jules, or any of their friends the truth about how the relationship ended. Bea is also autistic and has a bunch of sensory issues. There's a whole bunch of stuff she can't eat, and a lot of clothing she just cannot bear to wear. West comes across as a buttoned-up, disapproving know-it-all to Bea, she comes across as overly clumsy (she literally spills two different things over him the first night they meet), chaotic, opinionated, and a picky eater.

West's roommate Jean Paul and Bea's twin sister Jules are dating, and in fact, get engaged on the evening West and Bea first meet. They then trick them into texting one another under their middle names for a week and agreeing to a blind date, because they are so convinced the two will be perfect together. West and Bea both come to really enjoy their flirty text conversation, only to be filled with disappointment and, in Bea's case, righteous fury once they show up for their date and discover that they've been tricked. Not entirely sure why fake dating is going to get them revenge, but all of these stories have to get the couple to come up with a preposterous plan for some reason. 

Of course, it turns out that while they are very different, they also complement each other really well. Bea doesn't care that West works a lot, because he's a doctor helping children, and that's a very noble calling. West keeps trying to find ways to take care of Bea without making her feel smothered, like filling his freezer with frozen vegetable soups he's made, because she finds it so hard to eat vegetables, and even soups are sometimes horrible to her. 

So the main romance is actually quite sweet, and the whole fake dating thing is just a way for them to stop disliking one another and actually spend some quality time together. I really didn't like the subplot with Jules and Jean Paul, however. He seems to have a complete personality transplant from the start of the book to the latter half, and his motivations for setting up West and Bea seem rather unhinged, frankly. West's entire family of condescending, rich people surgeons were also implausibly awful.

I've seen this book on a bunch of Best of 2023 lists, and it's been given rave reviews by authors I like, such as Ali Hazelwood, Helen Hoang, and Talia Hibbert. It was a perfectly ok book, but I'm not sure I see myself ever re-reading it. There are better romance retellings of Much Ado About Nothing out there, such as The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You by Lily Anderson, and Speak Easy, Speak Love by McKelle George. Both of those are YA though, so if you want sexy times in your romance, this might be the one for you, after all. 

Judging a book by its cover: I don't know why, but I really dislike the art style of this cover. I don't know why I hate the way the characters are drawn, but I do. Which is a bit strange, as they look a lot more like the protagonists are described than on a lot of these sort of cartoony covers. I can't tell you why, there's just something that rubs me the wrong way about this. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR10 Book 6: "Speak Easy, Speak Love" by McKelle George

Page count: 432 pages
Rating: 4 stars

From Goodreads, because I'm lazy, and it sums up the book nicely:

Six teenagers' lives intertwine during one thrilling summer full of romantic misunderstandings and dangerous deals in this sparkling retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

After she is kicked out of boarding-school, seventeen-year-old Beatrice goes to her uncle's estate in Long Island. But Hey Nonny Nonny is more than just a rundown old mansion. Beatrice's cousin, Hero, runs a struggling speakeasy out of the basement - one that might not survive the summer. 

Along with Prince, a poor young man determined to prove his worth; his brother, John, a dark and dangerous agent of the local mob; Benedick, a handsome trust-fund kid trying to become a writer; and Maggie, a beautiful and talented singer; Beatrice and Hero throw all their efforts into planning a massive party to save the speakeasy. Despite all their worries, the summer is beautiful, love is in the air and Beatrice and Benedick are caught up in a romantic battle of wits that their friends may be quietly orchestrating in the background.

Hilariously clever and utterly charming, McKelle George's debut novel is full of intrigue and 1920s charm. 

In the end notes of this novel, McKelle George refers to Much Ado About Nothing as Shakespeare's most romantic play. I don't think she's wrong, and despite Hero being rather a drip in the play (and the way her storyline resolves isn't really romantic at all - she should have told Claudio where to stuff it), but the banter between Beatrice and Benedick is solid gold and one of the best examples of enemies to lovers I can think of. Back in December 2016, I read a modern YA adaptation of the play, The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You, which I liked a lot. When I saw this reviewed on Forever Young Adult, I was intrigued (1920s America is a time period I really don't know all that much about). What I can tell you (having read the end notes and seen the bibliography at the back of the book), Ms George seems to have really done her research before writing the novel.

The Lily Anderson modern adaptation was obviously a lot more loosely based on the play. Here, every chapter heading is taken from the play, and despite being set in a very different time period than the original, with a much more diverse cast, Speak Easy, Speak Love really does follow the major beats of the play very faithfully. In the original, it's clear that Beatrice and Benedick have a long history of bickering, here they meet for the first time towards the beginning of the novel. Beatrice wants to become a doctor, but money troubles has made it impossible for to complete her schooling. She cannot understand how Benedick can skip out on his final exams and blithely ignore his graduation, throwing away the privilege and opportunity he has because of his dreams of becoming a writer.

Margaret, or Maggie, is not Hero's faithful servant here, but an ambitious young black woman who dreams of becoming a jazz singer. In the play, John is pretty much an irredeemable villain, trying to ruin everything for everyone else for no particularly good reason (as far as the audience is told). Ms George has made him a much more complex character, although his motivations and the reasons for many of his actions are only gradually revealed, but his rivalry with his brother is a lot more nuanced and he's a lot more than just a stock bootlegging mob member. The author even finds a creative way to incorporate Dogberry and Verges, the rather silly comic relief characters in a believable way, which I was rather impressed with.

As I said, the whole "Hero is ruined" story strand of the original play is not one I'm overly fond of, so I was very interested in seeing how Ms. George was going to deal with it. In Lily Anderson's book, the "Hero" character is accused of cheating and temporarily expelled from her fancy prep school. In this book, I really liked the slightly convoluted way it came about that she was accused of faithlessness, and temporarily abandoned by some of her supporters, but even better how she is eventually and much more believably redeemed (no faked deaths here).

This is McKelle George's debut novel and I think she did a really good job with it. I'm absolutely going to keep an eye out for whatever she decides to write next.

Judging a book by its cover: While I'm not entirely sure why the stylised silhouettes dissolve into artful swirls of smoke below thigh level, I generally really like this cover. It's got an art deco feel that suits the Jazz Age/Prohibition/swinging 1920s era the book is set in. I'm not sure which of the characters the silhouettes are supposed to portray (there are three main romantic couples in this book, after all), but I can't imagine that pragmatic tomboy Beatrice would ever wear such an elaborate flowery headdress as the female cover model. Now if she was in overalls, maybe.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.