Reviews with content warning for Infidelity - Something Fabulous

Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall

3 reviews

jjjreads's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring fast-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

galleytrot's review against another edition

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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

3.75

READ: Mar 2023

FORMAT: Digital

BRIEF SUMMARY:

In this historical fiction/romance set in 1800s England, Valentine (the Duke of Malvern) feels he’s upholding his father’s wishes by asking Arabella for her hand in marriage. When it turns out she’s not as thrilled by the idea as he’d anticipated, her twin brother Bonny drags Valentine along on a chase from Surrey to Dover in an attempt to intercept the runaway fiancée on her flight to the Americas. The twins are both far more of a handful than Valentine ever could have imagined, and Bonny opens Valentine's eyes to a world he had no idea was even possible.

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 4 / 5⭐

Boy, what an adventure. This book’s got everything: carriage chases; daring escapes; duels; kidnappings; torrid affairs; battles of wit; bees galore; a pair of devoted fanfiction authors; and, a rather surprising amount of peach feasting.

I’ve got to hand it to Valentine. For all that he is quick to lose his temper and is doing his best to live a quiet, comfortable life out of the eye of scrutiny and controversy, he sure does stick to it when I would have turned away and washed my hands of the entire situation. Before Bonny could even get him out of the house, the twins had completely exhausted my social meter and left me thinking, “Nope, time to go home.” I lost count of how many events in their grand adventure I though would be the straw to break the camel’s back. But they just kept on going.

This book is an absolute cartoon of a historical fiction. Nearly every character is a caricature, all of them over-the-top. Most are theatrical and thriving on the adventure. A small handful are just along for the ride. Peggy might be the only sane character. I like Peggy.

TECHNICAL / PRODUCTION: 3.5 / 5⭐
I’ll be honest, I’m more inclined to categorize this ‘historical fiction’ as a fantasy instead. Hall notes at the beginning of the book that linguistic liberties are taken, and just about everyone in the book is queer. This is not an exaggeration. Valentine leaves his comfortable world that operates precisely as one would expect a gray-and-drab-1800’s-England to operate, and he stumbles into this explosive, colorful, high-octane alternate reality that shakes the foundation of everything he thought he knew to be true.

This book was both exhausting and frustrating to my poor little comfortable, introverted mind. I didn’t dislike it, but I did need to take a lot of breathers. My own patience was tested too many times. A DNF was never on the table (this book is still fun, for all the characters were tedious) but there were points where I wished it was. Repetition was used a number of times for comical purposes, and it mostly hit, but there was one scene in particular where I had to skip dialogue more times than I ought to have because of the repetitive content.

I’ve read a fair number of Hall’s books now and I have adored just about all of them. This one might be the one I liked the least, and it’s still not even close to terrible; at least, not compared to some of the other authors I’ve been reading recently. Something unusual I did encounter here was the occasional typo or grammatical error, and a number of clunky dialogue choices unrelated to the inclusion of modern phrasings. From what I can recall, most of Hall’s works I’ve encountered have been extremely well-put-together, so it was a bit of a surprise – enough for me to take note.

FINAL THOUGHTS - OVERALL: 3.75 / 5⭐

Read this book. It’s an experience, and it’s got a lot going for it. It’s far from perfect but it’s still a good time.

This book has representation for gays, lesbians, genderqueer or -fluid individuals, and demisexuals/demiromantics. Multiple badass women do badass things. There is at least one dark-skinned character described.

The following elaborates on my content warnings. These may be interpreted as spoilers, but I do not go into deep detail.

This book contains: theatrical, insensitive, and dismissive comments about suicide; many references to passed-away parents; homophobic rationalizations; alcohol use; potential creepy crawlies (bees, mentions of spiders, an upsetting number of tadpoles); restraint/confinement (character tied to chair, locked in a cellar); infidelity (kind of a gray area on this one but also not really); and, gun violence resulting in a shooting.

Content Warnings

readingthroughinfinity's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted

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

3.5

I'm a big fan of Alexis Hall books and while there were parts of this that I really enjoyed, there were also parts that just didn't work for me. I enjoyed the burgeoning romance between Bonny and Valentine and the witty humour, but some scenes felt too drawn out (the chair scene and all the chasing) and there wasn't a lot of depth to the plot. I also wasn't a huge fan of Arabella until the end (and even then, I didn't really warm to her). I can see what the author was trying to do with her character but I think it means people will either find her funny or really dislike her. This was still an enjoyable romance, but I think it could have worked better with faster pacing and more moving parts in the plot.

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