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A review by finesilkflower
Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall
funny
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This is complicated to review because there are some things I really, really liked and some I really, really didn't. The general premise is Bakeoff meets Gilmore Girls, two of my favorite things. A young single mom enters a Bakeoff-esque televised British Baking competition, has romance(s) with a fellow baker(s), confronts her rich emotionally cold parents, and comes to terms with what she wants in life. On paper it all sounds great and in general, I enjoyed reading the book.
I think the main misstep for me was that sexual assault is a major plot point. It's not depicted with graphic violence, it's more coercion, and there is a content warning for it at the beginning, but that doesn't make it work any better - it saves people from being blindsided by it, but by the time you get to it, you still are because the rest of the book has been so lighthearted and so throughly part of a cozy genre. I don't mind a romance that deals with a serious subject, or a cozy book where a main character has a traumatic past, but having the assault actually take place in the narrative felt really out of place tonally. Not only did it feel unnecessary, I think the storyline would have been stronger without it.Rosaline didn't just need to learn that the guy she was dating was an asshole - something that was made abundantly clear by the assault; she needed to learn that the things he wanted from her life were not the things she wanted from her life, which is a more subtle point. It was abundantly clear already to the reader that they weren't endgame so there was no need to turn the audience so thoroughly against him. Rosaline coming to the realization that he was being overbearing about her life choices, that he was treating her in a similar condescending manner as her parents, or simply that he had different values would have been sufficient reason to cause the breakup and would have aligned better with her overall character arc.
Miscellaneous observations:
Alexis Hall writes some bitingly clever and funny one-liners, but also has a tendency to prioritze one-liner cleverness over other things (e.g. characterization or being understandable), so the writing style pulled me out of the narrative at times.
Hall extremely nails the voice of GBBO, while making enough changes to make it feel distinct. The judges are basically gender-swapped Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry, with different accents and mannerisms, but I found myself really liking them. Host Grace Forsythe as described reminded me a bit of Sandy but I could hear all of her dialogue in Sue Perkins' voice. I ate up the descriptions of each individual contestant's bakes; the contest action was extremely engrossing in a similar way to watching the show.
I have to admit that as tonally inappropriate as it was, I really enjoyed the creatively disgusting foul-mouthed monologues of the showrunner.
I like the character being bisexual and that not really making a difference to the plot (except insofar as some of the specific ways that characters are shown to be assholes is through biphobia).
Amelie isn't a believable child, but I suppose she's not meant to be - she's meant to be the child character in a rom-com. It sometimes felt like all the characters were that way, though: archetypes. There is a level of abstraction that makes it hard to connect to these characters emotionally.
I think the main misstep for me was that sexual assault is a major plot point. It's not depicted with graphic violence, it's more coercion, and there is a content warning for it at the beginning, but that doesn't make it work any better - it saves people from being blindsided by it, but by the time you get to it, you still are because the rest of the book has been so lighthearted and so throughly part of a cozy genre. I don't mind a romance that deals with a serious subject, or a cozy book where a main character has a traumatic past, but having the assault actually take place in the narrative felt really out of place tonally. Not only did it feel unnecessary, I think the storyline would have been stronger without it.
Miscellaneous observations:
Alexis Hall writes some bitingly clever and funny one-liners, but also has a tendency to prioritze one-liner cleverness over other things (e.g. characterization or being understandable), so the writing style pulled me out of the narrative at times.
Hall extremely nails the voice of GBBO, while making enough changes to make it feel distinct. The judges are basically gender-swapped Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry, with different accents and mannerisms, but I found myself really liking them. Host Grace Forsythe as described reminded me a bit of Sandy but I could hear all of her dialogue in Sue Perkins' voice. I ate up the descriptions of each individual contestant's bakes; the contest action was extremely engrossing in a similar way to watching the show.
I have to admit that as tonally inappropriate as it was, I really enjoyed the creatively disgusting foul-mouthed monologues of the showrunner.
I like the character being bisexual and that not really making a difference to the plot (except insofar as some of the specific ways that characters are shown to be assholes is through biphobia).
Amelie isn't a believable child, but I suppose she's not meant to be - she's meant to be the child character in a rom-com. It sometimes felt like all the characters were that way, though: archetypes. There is a level of abstraction that makes it hard to connect to these characters emotionally.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Biphobia and Sexual assault