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kelseyd's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I LOVE Aya de León's writing and I was so excited about this story. This was a new character to the series, and Violet was not the easiest to love at first--but the author really showed her strength and everything she had to overcome to fit in. She has a perfect life in New York, engaged to her perfect (rich) man, when she loans her phone to a woman on the street who frames her for cheating with a strip club owner and running off with his money. Dumped and fired, she has to reconnect with her family and roots to remember what she actually wants out of life. Full of heists and hacking and a smidge of romance, this was a great time and I can't wait for the next one.
shannanh's review against another edition
4.0
A very interesting story about the two very different lives of sisters. Violet had the perfect life. She was working in her dream job as a make up artist assistant to very wealthy people, and about to marry her very rich college sweetheart, Quenton. But that all changes when she allows unbeknownst to her, the mistress of Strip club owner Teddy Hughes to use her phone. His wife, Etta, because of mistaken identity, destroys all that Violet holds dear. Not only that, but Violet is the FBI's prime suspect in crimes committed by Teddy. When Etta discovers her mistake, vows to help Violet Clear her name. Lilly, Violet's wayward sister is a stripper at one of Teddy's establishments, but they fear shutdown when Teddy runs off with all the money and records. With the help of their stripper's union, and Etta, they're able to keep working. With a team that includes characters from the previous books in the series, Etta, Violet and Lilly, they all work together to right the wrongs that have taken place.
There were a lot of surprises throughout the story, and I really enjoyed reading the story. I especially enjoyed the flow of the story as well as how the characters worked so well together. Thank you to Net Galley for this exciting and interesting read. I have not read the first two books in the series, but you will only need to read them if you want to know the history of some of the secondary characters in my opinion.
There were a lot of surprises throughout the story, and I really enjoyed reading the story. I especially enjoyed the flow of the story as well as how the characters worked so well together. Thank you to Net Galley for this exciting and interesting read. I have not read the first two books in the series, but you will only need to read them if you want to know the history of some of the secondary characters in my opinion.
shannanh's review
5.0
A very interesting story about the two very different lives of sisters. Violet had the perfect life. She was working in her dream job as a make up artist assistant to very wealthy people, and about to marry her very rich college sweetheart, Quenton. But that all changes when she allows unbeknownst to her, the mistress of Strip club owner Teddy Hughes to use her phone. His wife, Etta, because of mistaken identity, destroys all that Violet holds dear. Not only that, but Violet is the FBI's prime suspect in crimes committed by Teddy. When Etta discovers her mistake, vows to help Violet Clear her name. Lilly, Violet's wayward sister is a stripper at one of Teddy's establishments, but they fear shutdown when Teddy runs off with all the money and records. With the help of their stripper's union, and Etta, they're able to keep working. With a team that includes characters from the previous books in the series, Etta, Violet and Lilly, they all work together to right the wrongs that have taken place.
There were a lot of surprises throughout the story, and I really enjoyed reading the story. I especially enjoyed the flow of the story as well as how the characters worked so well together. Thank you to Net Galley for this exciting and interesting read. I have not read the first two books in the series, but you will only need to read them if you want to know the history of some of the secondary characters in my opinion.
There were a lot of surprises throughout the story, and I really enjoyed reading the story. I especially enjoyed the flow of the story as well as how the characters worked so well together. Thank you to Net Galley for this exciting and interesting read. I have not read the first two books in the series, but you will only need to read them if you want to know the history of some of the secondary characters in my opinion.
becleighton's review against another edition
2.0
Oh boy. This book was a hot mess. I loved the first two books in the series, but this frustrated the hell out of me - yet there was still plenty of endearing bits, because an Aya de Leon book that is an utter hot mess is still an Aya de Leon book.
1. Violet was such a bizarre choice of protagonist for a book in this series, with her whorephobia for most of the book and her class differences from basically every other character in the series. The plot contortions needed for her to meet those other characters and then the further contortions needed to give her anything to do in a heist novel when all the pre-existing and more skilled characters exist made the heist plot a huge mess.
2. Violet's whorephobia means the heist plot winds up being mostly a case of wronged strip club middle management plotting to save the day (with token and kind of out of character cameos from Marisol and Tyesha), and mostly ignoring the existence of the more-wronged strippers' union from the previous book so middle management can have their moment in the sun and save the strippers along the way. This took the series in such a strange direction. The heroes of Uptown Thief were full service sex workers, then they mostly got sidelined for the strippers in The Boss, and then they got mostly sidelined while strip club middle management (and a whorephobe) saved them in this book. It's like the books were going up a sex worker respectability hierarchy in the kind of direction that might next have wound up with a bunch of white burlesque dancers running a "rescue" for sex workers. I feel like de Leon realised this was getting a bit weird, considering that the protagonist of Book 4 is a character from and not seen since Uptown Thief.
3. Serena. de Leon has always seemed like someone who wants to do representation right. Five years ago she wrote a blog post talking up the representation of her then-bit trans character Serena. Serena finally gets a much larger role in this book - and dear god, de Leon stuffs it up like it's 1995. I thought it was weird when her transness seemed to be erased in the first half of the book despite her prominence in the story - and then it was brought up and de Leon rapid-fire cycled through basically every cliche of a trans woman written by a cis person in history. She's deadnamed and we hear all about her completely stereotypical pre-transition story, she's targeted with a really lazy transphobia scene, we still don't hear about the more interesting parts of her story hinted at throughout the series, and then she's forgotten about until a quick and lazy jab at a happy ending. Clearly, no trans woman saw this before it was published, and it kind of made me wonder if de Leon has ever met one. She stuffed up this so badly that it kinda makes me doubt her attempts at representing groups I'm not part of.
And yet, underneath the mess, there was enough that was good that I was always going to finish the book even as it was frustrating me. I felt like if de Leon had tried to write a standalone novel about a Violet character that didn't try to contort the story to fit into this series and didn't attempt to write a trans character, this would've been a book I'd have really quite enjoyed. I'll be picking up Book 4 when I've had an opportunity to get a bit less irritated after this book.
1. Violet was such a bizarre choice of protagonist for a book in this series, with her whorephobia for most of the book and her class differences from basically every other character in the series. The plot contortions needed for her to meet those other characters and then the further contortions needed to give her anything to do in a heist novel when all the pre-existing and more skilled characters exist made the heist plot a huge mess.
2. Violet's whorephobia means the heist plot winds up being mostly a case of wronged strip club middle management plotting to save the day (with token and kind of out of character cameos from Marisol and Tyesha), and mostly ignoring the existence of the more-wronged strippers' union from the previous book so middle management can have their moment in the sun and save the strippers along the way. This took the series in such a strange direction. The heroes of Uptown Thief were full service sex workers, then they mostly got sidelined for the strippers in The Boss, and then they got mostly sidelined while strip club middle management (and a whorephobe) saved them in this book. It's like the books were going up a sex worker respectability hierarchy in the kind of direction that might next have wound up with a bunch of white burlesque dancers running a "rescue" for sex workers. I feel like de Leon realised this was getting a bit weird, considering that the protagonist of Book 4 is a character from and not seen since Uptown Thief.
3. Serena. de Leon has always seemed like someone who wants to do representation right. Five years ago she wrote a blog post talking up the representation of her then-bit trans character Serena. Serena finally gets a much larger role in this book - and dear god, de Leon stuffs it up like it's 1995. I thought it was weird when her transness seemed to be erased in the first half of the book despite her prominence in the story - and then it was brought up and de Leon rapid-fire cycled through basically every cliche of a trans woman written by a cis person in history. She's deadnamed and we hear all about her completely stereotypical pre-transition story, she's targeted with a really lazy transphobia scene, we still don't hear about the more interesting parts of her story hinted at throughout the series, and then she's forgotten about until a quick and lazy jab at a happy ending. Clearly, no trans woman saw this before it was published, and it kind of made me wonder if de Leon has ever met one. She stuffed up this so badly that it kinda makes me doubt her attempts at representing groups I'm not part of.
And yet, underneath the mess, there was enough that was good that I was always going to finish the book even as it was frustrating me. I felt like if de Leon had tried to write a standalone novel about a Violet character that didn't try to contort the story to fit into this series and didn't attempt to write a trans character, this would've been a book I'd have really quite enjoyed. I'll be picking up Book 4 when I've had an opportunity to get a bit less irritated after this book.
vortacist's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-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
beautifullybookishbethany's review
3.0
Actual Rating: 3.5 stars
This was a pleasant surprise! The Accidental Mistress is kind of an adult romance, but what's interesting is that the romantic relationships are actually tangential to the main relationship of the story- one between two sisters. Violet and Lily are estranged sisters from Trinidad living in New York City. Violet has an Ivy League college degree and a wealthy fiance, while Lily works as a stripper and hops from relationship to relationship, with both men and women. Cue conflict! But when Violet is framed as being the mistress of a criminal strip club owner who has skipped town with investment money, the sisters are thrown together in an effort to track him down.
This is a very quick read, but one that is full of important issues. A lot of scenes deal with race, identity, racism, and anti-immigrant sentiment. It also takes on the issue of prejudice toward strippers and other sex workers in pretty thought-provoking ways. While there are romantic relationships and a handful of explicit sex scenes, this is really a book about family, identity, and acceptance. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I was going to! Oh, and also there are some interesting side characters who I imagine will show up in spin-off novels. There is even one pretty badass transgender woman who ends the book with a burgeoning romance.
This was a pleasant surprise! The Accidental Mistress is kind of an adult romance, but what's interesting is that the romantic relationships are actually tangential to the main relationship of the story- one between two sisters. Violet and Lily are estranged sisters from Trinidad living in New York City. Violet has an Ivy League college degree and a wealthy fiance, while Lily works as a stripper and hops from relationship to relationship, with both men and women. Cue conflict! But when Violet is framed as being the mistress of a criminal strip club owner who has skipped town with investment money, the sisters are thrown together in an effort to track him down.
This is a very quick read, but one that is full of important issues. A lot of scenes deal with race, identity, racism, and anti-immigrant sentiment. It also takes on the issue of prejudice toward strippers and other sex workers in pretty thought-provoking ways. While there are romantic relationships and a handful of explicit sex scenes, this is really a book about family, identity, and acceptance. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I was going to! Oh, and also there are some interesting side characters who I imagine will show up in spin-off novels. There is even one pretty badass transgender woman who ends the book with a burgeoning romance.
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