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theschinxy 's review for:

Dr. Stanton by T.L. Swan
5.0

This rating deserves a bit of an explanation (and also because its how I rate most of my books)

5 Stars is the ultimate escape and enjoyment of a story --and my romance genre binge this year is all about those two main feelings. If I can't stop reading (or listening via audiobook) to a story it almost always is an easy 5. :) It certainly doesn't mean that there can't be problematic aspects -- but the ultimate question is how much they bother my enjoyment. In this case I would still give a 4.5 or 5 to the overall story. I can see WHY it's popular.... but I can also see why many people feel the way they do about it.

A few points that are worth mentioning that may be deal breakers for other readers:

-The female main character should be American but uses a ton of British/Australian English. As a trained TEFL teacher, I am really in tune to the difference in BE and AE and yikes! All I did was correct her in my head throughout the story :-P This was probably the main thing that pulled my overall enjoyment down if there was something and it honestly is just something I feel a good editor should catch.

-In the Audiobook, the German pronunciation especially could have used some significant coaching. It was HORRIBLE. I can't speak to the French too much but it sounded quite a bit better to me. In the age of voice coaches and accent coaches, I don't see why it can't be worked on when the voice actors are CLEARLY amazing at handling accents. It wouldn't have horrible to work on either because we're only talking about a few sentences... but this probably only bothers people like me who happen to be fluent in German ;)

-As others have mentioned, MFC really capitulates so much in this book -- to some degree it occasionally feels a bit phony or spineless with what she wants/how she talks. With some of the things that went down in this book, a 'strong' woman might have handled it quite differently. To put it in different words: It felt a bit convenient to moving the plot along which happened, quite generally speaking, in a very short amount of time.

-Because of this quick capitulation and domineering nature of the MMC, consent felt borderline shaky a bit on some of the points. Not just sexual consent, but also what was in her power to do as a mother and as a parent. To some degree the author did a good job of pointing out why it was BS, but it was a bit shaky for me. Could be triggering to some. Overall, though, with consent issues being pretty much the ONLY thing that turns me off in a story, I still was okay with it.

Those points aside, -- quite the escape. Enjoy!