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ls1314 's review for:
Heathen and Honeysuckle
by Sarah A. Bailey
I felt a LOT of things reading this book and to me that is a good thing. Sometimes I read and it truly goes in and out of my brain never to be thought of again and I certainly will be thinking of this book again. This is a second chance romance about Darby (the titular honeysuckle) and Leo (the titular heathen – who, if you ask me, got the raw end of the deal with that nickname). They fall in love as teenagers, something mysterious happens to make Darby leave, and they reconnect ten years later when Darby is a runaway bride at her wedding. And we jump back and forth between present and ten years ago.
My two biggest gripes with second chance books is that 1) I need to feel like the characters have changed in some way so that they actually stand a chance of working this time around and 2) the reason they broke up has to not be dumb or insurmountable. And in the case of this book, I feel like we just barely passed on both 1 and 2.
This book started off really strong. If I had any Canva skills and even an ounce of patience, I would have been making a beautiful, aesthetic Instagram carousel of Leo’s quotes. Some of them hit HARD. And then some of them feel repetitive and childish. For every quote that slammed my heart (in a good way), we got a “suck, honey” which made my eyes roll back into my head. Like sir, are you using WORD PLAY in the middle of sex? Pardonne-moi?
The characters both spoke in big declarative statements and on the nose metaphors which I think worked really well when they were teens because teen brains function that way (at least mine did). But I wish that Darby and Leo’s thought processes and language skills matured over those ten years. And maybe they were mentally stuck at 17 years old but the things they said started to feel repetitive. And it also started to feel like tell instead of show.
I felt like Leo’s character was really well developed. You could see how his traumas shaped him and how Darby impacted his life. Darby felt a little flat. I think it is because she spends a lot of time in the present crying. Which, don’t get me wrong, I am a big cry baby so no hate here, but I wanted to read about her getting angry or frustrated or anything else so that her character had a little more umph.
Darby’s parents, especially her dad, were almost cartoonish in how horrible they were. I thought we’d see him twirling his mustache and tying her up on some train tracks at some point. I don’t remember if there was a content warning in the beginning of the book but he should have his own section in a content warning. The villains in books don't need pages upon pages of backstory but I think knowing anything about why he is the way he is (even if it is that he is truly just a psychopath) would have made him feel a little more dimensional.
I will not spoil the reason that Darby left but I will say that it was a big frustration for me. We don’t find out what it is until around 85% of the way into the book. Because of that, 1) you have to listen to Darby talk about how horrible it is over and over (which again feels repetitive) and 2) there is not a lot of time for the characters to process the reason so that part felt rushed and it also felt very surmountable (oh we wrapped this up in two paragraphs? Why was it such a big deal then?).
All of that being said, will I be reading the next book? OF COURSE. I, too, am a heathen who needs to know what happens to Dahlia (Darby’s sister who truly should have the biggest daddy issues in the world).
Thank you to Page & Vine and NetGalley for providing this eARC! All opinions are my own.