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rjordan19's review
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: There’s no kisses or bedroom scenes
Sex Scene Length: There are no scenes
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): no scenes
Humor: I don’t recall much
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? slow to medium
When mains are first on page together: Not too far in, about 8%
Cliffhanger: Yes – the story continues in The Bittersweet Bride
Epilogue: No
Format: read owned e-book (it was free)
Should I read in order?
This is a prequel short story to The Bittersweet Bride (book 1 of Riley’s Advertisements for Love series)
Basic plot:
A wildflower saleswoman meets a playwright who wants more from his gilded cage.
Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1813)
- Epping, England (outside London) and London setting
- writer hero (and second son of an Earl)
- heroine sells flowers
- short story
- forbidden love
- no steam
Ages:
- hero is 20, heroine is 18
First line:
Something had to change for Ewan Fitzwilliam.
My thoughts:
This is a short story with background for the mains in The Bittersweet Bride.
I am a bit sad I didn’t love this story – I own the Bittersweet Bride and seeing it was second chance, I was hoping by reading this first I would like that trope a bit more than I usually do.
But I found this book pretty slow and uneventful. I...didn’t dislike the mains, but I didn’t love them either. I felt like I barely knew the mains still after this story and didn’t really see their relationship as something that was strong and cemented together before this break that they experience before the next story.
Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.
[
- mention of physical abuse by father of hero
- racism (heroine deals with this from a side character)
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: There’s no kisses or bedroom scenes
Sex Scene Length: There are no scenes
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): no scenes
Humor: I don’t recall much
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? slow to medium
When mains are first on page together: Not too far in, about 8%
Cliffhanger: Yes – the story continues in The Bittersweet Bride
Epilogue: No
Format: read owned e-book (it was free)
Should I read in order?
This is a prequel short story to The Bittersweet Bride (book 1 of Riley’s Advertisements for Love series)
Basic plot:
A wildflower saleswoman meets a playwright who wants more from his gilded cage.
Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1813)
- Epping, England (outside London) and London setting
- writer hero (and second son of an Earl)
- heroine sells flowers
- short story
- forbidden love
- no steam
Ages:
- hero is 20, heroine is 18
First line:
Something had to change for Ewan Fitzwilliam.
My thoughts:
This is a short story with background for the mains in The Bittersweet Bride.
I am a bit sad I didn’t love this story – I own the Bittersweet Bride and seeing it was second chance, I was hoping by reading this first I would like that trope a bit more than I usually do.
But I found this book pretty slow and uneventful. I...didn’t dislike the mains, but I didn’t love them either. I felt like I barely knew the mains still after this story and didn’t really see their relationship as something that was strong and cemented together before this break that they experience before the next story.
Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.
[
- mention of physical abuse by father of hero
- racism (heroine deals with this from a side character)
emeliestegbornblixt's review
2.0
The way this short story was structured was... deeply unsatisfying. There were strange time-jumps during which most of the actual building-up of the relationship happened, which led to the relationship just not feeling convincing. Basically this is feels like a draft of the framework of the story, where we get the scenes that would be listed in a full synopsis but nothing of the things in-between the major plot points. The characters are not fleshed out enough to be convincing, and neither is their relationship. Which is disappointing, because intersectional historical romance set in England with a black female MC? Sounds amazing. So it's sad that my first introduction to it would feel so empty and boring. However, this is a short story about characters that do have at least one entire novel (which is a second chance romance I have not read), so there's a chance everything I thought this was missing shows up in that one. So dispite all my complaining, I am willing to give Vanessa Riley - and these under-developed characters - at least one more chance.
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