Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Take the Lead

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

booksandcurlz's review

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emotional funny inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Full review to come.

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thesmutsister_emma's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

It's Always a Good Time to Examine Things
I'm going to get very blunt with y'all but I feel like it's necessary for this one. As a white woman growing up in the south, I have always known a fair amount of privilege. Over the years, I have tried to look at that privilege and take inventory of it while attempting to be a better ally. It doesn't always happen until I am face to face with it. This was one of those cases.

Our FMC, Gina, is a Puerto Rican woman in her late 20s on a competition dance show that is vaguely like Dancing With The Stars. She is one of their regular cast members during the show and is paired with Stone, who is a reality TV "star" from a survivalist show that includes his family. Throughout the book, as we see Gina and Stone falling for one another, something Gina kept coming back to was being insistent that she would not be involved in a "showmance." Gina says she does not want to be seen as the sexy Latina and does not want it to ruin her image. At first I totally understood where she was coming from, as I can understand being a woman it impacting her image. The further the story went on, though and the more Gina pushed back with this excuse, I was understanding less and less. By our third act breakup when Gina was using this to tell Stone why they needed to breakup, I was extremely frustrated. I didn't get why it was that big of a deal. Then I sat on it. Of course I wouldn't understand it. I'm a white woman. It was not meant for me to relate to, but it was made for me to learn from. I needed to look at my own privilege where I was saying, "It can'treally be that bad. It can't affect her this badly," and realize that while it might not affect me that badly, it surely could affect Gina that badly.

I was able to take things from this book and learn from them as I hope to continue to do throughout my reading journey. Now, onto my review.

The Characters
Gina: I loved Gina so much, especially after I reflected on why her decisions didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I love how powerful she was and that she was unwavering in the fact that she would not let anyone stand in her way of getting what she wanted when it came to her career or even the trophy. She was going to do it her way, and by god, she was going to do it the right way without faking anything. This was so strong to see and I loved it.
Stone: I really enjoyed Stone, but I thought his arc was going somewhere completely different, especially by the end of the book with the way he felt about everything going on around him. It was something I was not expecting, but not in a bad way.

Things I Loved
I really loved the chemistry between the two of them. It was something I could tell even off the page. I also really enjoyed the writing style a lot. I liked the development I saw in both characters.

Things I Didn't Love
I felt like the pacing and timeline were a little weird. I felt like there was going to bye more buildup to the third act breakup rather than just kind of a bam moment. The casual sexual harassment (at the least) of Stone bay Lauren also really bothered me because it was just kind of played for laughs. This wouldn't bother me as much if it wasn't for Gina's whole thing being that she wants to be objectified and sexualized as little as possible then for our MMC to beg SAed by a side character in the last few chapters and it to just be shrugged off immediately really bothered me.

The Final Verdict
This was such a good book and had definitely solidified my opinion that I need the rest of Alexis Daria's books in physical copy. I'm super excited for this rerelease and can't wait for everyone else to read it as well.

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booksandcoffeewithlexi's review

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emotional funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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caseythereader's review

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emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

Thanks to Avon Books for the free advance copy of this book.

- TAKE THE LEAD is a reissue of Alexis Daria's first book. You can see where her writing has improved over the years, as well as what she's always been great at: chemistry that sparks right off the page.
- To be honest, romance novels where the man is so huge and the woman is so tiny have never really been for me, and this book kept hammering their sizes home. Your mileage may vary, of course.
- I did love the dance competition show setting though. All those rehearsals of intimate dances made for excellent tension building!

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jazhandz's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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theoceanrose's review

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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readingwithmeredith's review against another edition

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Too much open door for me

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roget's review against another edition

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lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

In this story, Gina works as a professional dancer on a television series loosely based on Dancing With the Stars. Despite being super talented and hardworking, she's yet to take the trophy or make it to the finals, but this season, she's paired with a reality t.v. survivalist named Stone who might provide the perfect partnership to get them the win. Things get sort of complicated when it becomes clear the producers are pushing a "showmance" angle on their partnership, and Gina isn't pleased because she has strict clauses in her contract to restrict that sort of thing. (She's Latina, and she doesn't want to feed into stereotypes or restrict her future professional opportunities by being known as someone who hooked up with a work colleague.) To make matters more complex, Stone's reality show isn't all that it appears, and his family is constantly pressuring him to stay quiet and keep the secrets behind their own production, which essentially isolates him from making meaningful connections with others. As you might guess, Stone and Gina have fantastic chemistry, though, and keeping their developing relationship a secret proves difficult.

For my fellow aces/awkward goobs/persons who do not fancy on page spice: There is MA content in this story, but I was able to skip/skim without confusion.

My take:
This story is complicated. At times, I really loved Gina and her ambition, and I was deeply invested in her success. But her reactions didn't always ring true to me, especially when

Stone purposefully neglected to tell her that they'd been filmed kissing. This felt like a huge deal, and Gina's mentality in her reaction was already undercutting the legitimacy of her feelings (i.e. she was internally acknowledging that she wasn't THAT upset, it was mostly a defense mechanism). But...Gina has every right to be furious? Even if she was helpless to stop the show from using the footage, she deserved to know, and that wasn't respectful of Stone to make that call on her behalf--especially since this was her long term working environment and not his. I understand she talked to a producer alone about a different situation when she was photographed leaving Stone's apartment, but the contexts were different, and Stone was not unaware of the fact that they'd been photographed when she did. So, comparing those two moments as justification didn't really make sense to me. The story includes an apology from Stone at the very end, but it's already been skated over because Gina's decided by then that she overreacted. I guess I didn't follow her internal reasoning very well, or how she chose to process Stone's actions. That bothered me a lot, and it kept me from enjoying the story like I might've.

.

While Gina's professional arch is really interesting, I wish we would've gotten a closer look at the confrontation/conclusion of Stone's. The book builds up the pressure he feels in his family's reality show a lot, but we don't see the resolution on page. Meli was cool, though. <3

Ultimately, many of the dance numbers were fun to read about, and the reality show pressures were a unique plot element, but this one wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Griffin for providing an ARC of this rerelease for consideration for review. <3

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