Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Delilah Green Doesn't Care

Edit: I came back to bump this rating a smidge higher after doing so for Astrid’s book also. I was too harsh the first time around and this deserves 4 stars because I did really like it.

Original review:
Delilah and Claire are at opposite ends of their lives- Delilah is a photographer trying to find success in New York after a pretty lonely, loveless childhood following her father’s death. Claire had a child young and she never got to experience her wild 20s, which is part of why she finds the courage to go hit on Delilah in the bar, completely unaware that the subject of her flirtation is her best friend’s sister.

This book has a bunch of great romance tropes, like the classic only one bed and the characters seem plucked right out of a TV movie script. The villains are very villainy and nobody seems inclined to stop their bad behavior. Isabel is super controlling of Astrid and downright neglectful of Delilah and Spencer spends every scene he’s in ordering Astrid around like she’s his servant. It’s pretty Cinderella-y, but if the two sisters were both Cinderella at the same time.

Now for the negative: The characters in this spend a LOT of time drinking, it’s practically a personality trait. It feels like an excuse to have Claire and Delilah act on their attraction to each other when they’re both too afraid of getting too attached otherwise. And the villains are- as I mentioned- very villainy. Isabel I can maybe squint at and understand her motivations but I can’t figure out why Spencer acts the way he does. He’s just there to be generally terrible and to give Delilah a reason to feel bad for Astrid.

My favorite character development came near the end as

Astrid and Delilah realize they’ve both hurt each other while blaming the other the whole time. I loved seeing their baby steps to fixing their shattered relationship.

I would love to see a book more about repairing that relationship.

Content Warnings

hanz's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

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

4.0

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wilful_wisp's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

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

4.75

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brynn_books's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted medium-paced

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

4.0

This was a cute, funny, lighthearted sapphic read. It was the perfect read to get me out of my reading slump (especially during pride month). Instantly, I loved the dynamic between Claire and Delilah. I loved seeing their relationship grow throughout the story.

I do wish some of the other characters were more fleshed out. By the end of the story, I could really get a feel for who Delilah is (which makes sense since this is mostly her story), but I wanted to know more about the other characters. Like, I wanted to know more about what Claire likes to do (other than running the bookstore and taking care of Ruby). But, despite not knowing much about them, I do like how all of the characters had flaws and made mistakes and were allowed to be messy.

I especially loved all of Delilah’s photography throughout the novel and how her pictures represent powerful queer women. It shows how queer women can just exist. They’re allowed to be happy, angry, sad, excited, or whatever. This is just one of the many themes I loved that were woven throughout the story.

Overall, this is a very powerful, queer novel. I would highly recommend picking this up.

Content Warnings

hrtlss_grl's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

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

3.0

OK. So I liked this one more than I thought I would for about the first 40% of the book. At one point I almost DNF'd it, but kept going because it was so well written. For most of the book Astrid comes off as this mean girl, and her friends her little clique. Which makes sense, but it just made me want to pull my hair out because I can't stand books where it is a bully-romance. But eventually it gets better, fleshes out the characters more and actually makes it feel like it works. Next one is a sort of Taming of the Shrew sort of thing, so hopefully it can redeem Astrid for me!

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kegila's review against another edition

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4.0

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