A review by eemms
The Wallflower Wager by Tessa Dare

lighthearted medium-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

 This book started off so strong but the last 25% just tanked it for me.

At least 2/3s of this book are great - Penny is sweet and kindhearted, Gabriel respects her, it's very silly and sweet and there's lots of kittens and animals. Lots of points for Penny being a MC who has masturbated before and Gabriel really respects her choices including her desire to get railed! Great! I'm still not totally sure what year it takes place in or what type of parrot Delilah is (she's got to be a cockatoo right?) but whatever, it's set in Fantasy Regency England and not everyone cares about parrots like I do.

The last quarter is just...totally deflated it all for me. Somehow it stopped feeling like it was about Penny? The emotional climax is definitely when Penny confides in Gabriel. It's a big deal for her, and he respects that. It's great, I liked it. Then I looked at how long was left in the book and knew that the pacing was going to let me down.
There's a last minute conflict over nothing which goes nowhere in terms of emotional payout, and then the end of the book is a big confrontation where Gabriel goes all alpha protector on her in a way no one is here for. There was nothing I liked about it. I don't like when LIs go violent to solve problems, I don't like him deciding to "take care of things" for her - these were lampshaded even, with Penny's friends being like "this is kind of unfair to take out of Penny's hands" and the book just went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about it. And then idk, something about the way Penny confronted her past abuser in the very end just felt...off? It's nice that it happened I guess, Bad Guy got his due, I guess? But emotionally it just wasn't there for me and it all felt totally extraneous.


Maybe just file this under "would've been better as a novella" and take it at that. 

cw:
past child sexual abuse
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