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firstorderpixie's review
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
evila_elf's review
2.0
Definitely not anywhere near as good as The Front Runner. The story was a neat idea, but a bit cliched. Maybe I have just read too many books. The writing style--It was told from the first person POV, but I couldn't get a good grasp on the character. Hardly any insight into his head. Book could have been told in half the space.
Read this last week and the details are already slipping.
Read this last week and the details are already slipping.
holmesstorybooks's review
3.0
The Fancy Dancer by Patricia Nell Warren, read for my 20th century queer project, a project where I read 100+ books from the 20th century, by queer and trans authors. This one centres around a hot priest and his biker leather daddy lover so sign me the fuck up let’s heckin go. Tom Meeker (the hot priest) and Vidal (his First Nations lover) meet for the purposes of counselling, and romance disturbs these troubled waters.
This book is saccharine sweet, camp, and gossipy in the best way. It is also shallow, far more complicated than it needs to be and too many plot points just simply resolve themselves at the end. I appreciated that Warren knew enough about the area of Montana that she wrote specifically what tribe Vidal was from, though some of her writing felt antiquated, biased and stuffy.
There's a part where the author says "[The Hot Priest's] romance with Vidal washed away all of the trauma that the church forced upon First Nations people," or something to that effect, and like, nah. So much of Vidal's writing was ... cringe-worthy, weird; a lil racist and somewhat overwritten, frankly.
Warren was trying to write a book about class, oppression, love, the constraints of the church and … I feel like she bit off more than she could chew. So ambitious for a romance book.
And often, it didn’t feel like a romance. It felt like a “I’m a priest so let me recount the gossip of all the townspeople in this tiny allotment” which was also delicious and wonderful. At times, it dragged, other times, I flew through it. It was progressive in a way, but odd in others. It seemed at times, more focussed on personal growth for both parties, than romance.
There was a picnic scene that I adored, but apart from that I struggle to remember the sequencing of the book. It was all over the place. I felt like, often, Warren’s own personal views on a particular part of the town, or a topic, would come up and she would write it because she felt compelled to tell the reader how she felt about a certain thing? But then her sharing her views with the reader got in the way of the story quite substantially.
But then!! We’d get a scene with Vidal and Tom Meeker TALKING ABOUT QUEERNESS IN THE CONFESSIONAL AND IT WAS SO COMPELLING. Damn.
Also, I wanted an epilogue. What happened to the characters? Where are they now? I wanted to see their best selves, out in the world, and I didn’t get it.
I feel so conflicted about this book! I liked it, but I wanted it to be so much more!
This book is saccharine sweet, camp, and gossipy in the best way. It is also shallow, far more complicated than it needs to be and too many plot points just simply resolve themselves at the end. I appreciated that Warren knew enough about the area of Montana that she wrote specifically what tribe Vidal was from, though some of her writing felt antiquated, biased and stuffy.
There's a part where the author says "[The Hot Priest's] romance with Vidal washed away all of the trauma that the church forced upon First Nations people," or something to that effect, and like, nah. So much of Vidal's writing was ... cringe-worthy, weird; a lil racist and somewhat overwritten, frankly.
Warren was trying to write a book about class, oppression, love, the constraints of the church and … I feel like she bit off more than she could chew. So ambitious for a romance book.
And often, it didn’t feel like a romance. It felt like a “I’m a priest so let me recount the gossip of all the townspeople in this tiny allotment” which was also delicious and wonderful. At times, it dragged, other times, I flew through it. It was progressive in a way, but odd in others. It seemed at times, more focussed on personal growth for both parties, than romance.
There was a picnic scene that I adored, but apart from that I struggle to remember the sequencing of the book. It was all over the place. I felt like, often, Warren’s own personal views on a particular part of the town, or a topic, would come up and she would write it because she felt compelled to tell the reader how she felt about a certain thing? But then her sharing her views with the reader got in the way of the story quite substantially.
But then!! We’d get a scene with Vidal and Tom Meeker TALKING ABOUT QUEERNESS IN THE CONFESSIONAL AND IT WAS SO COMPELLING. Damn.
Also, I wanted an epilogue. What happened to the characters? Where are they now? I wanted to see their best selves, out in the world, and I didn’t get it.
I feel so conflicted about this book! I liked it, but I wanted it to be so much more!
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