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A review by jkneebone
Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
In Delilah Green Doesn’t Care, the titular Delilah returns home to small-town Oregon to photograph her semi-estranged stepsister’s wedding and finds herself falling for one of the maids of honor, Claire. Delilah has aspirations of greatness in the NYC art world and a whole load of baggage with her stepmom Isabel and stepsister Astrid, and is only photographing Astrid’s wedding because she really needs the money. Claire is a single mom to ten year old Ruby, trying to navigate Ruby’s father’s recent reappearance in their lives. Along the way, Delilah agrees to team up with Claire and the other MOH Iris to break up the wedding, because Astrid’s fiancé is a grade-A asshole.
I was excited going into this because of how many people I saw enjoying it but I have to say…I was not impressed. In my opinion, it was not very well written - a lot of the language felt very rote and overused, and none of the descriptions of the romance felt specific or unique. Obviously in romance novels there are certain emotional beats the readers expect you to hit, but I also expect a bit of creativity in the wording if possible, and this book really missed the mark.
I also found myself getting annoyed with a lot of the characters. Delilah still has a major chip on her shoulder about being excluded by Astrid & co when they were teenagers, to the point where it seems to be the basis for most of her personality and decisions. I get that she had a shitty childhood and that as a kid she couldn’t see the nuance of the situation, but to be thirty and still not able to look beyond your own experiences to realize that the other people involved were also children at the time?Yes, we finally got that at the end when Delilah read Astrid’s diary, but that didn’t make up for Delilah’s willful ignorance for the first three-quarters of the story.
As for Claire - I wish that the book had focused more on her fear that Josh would leave her & Ruby again, rather than her worries about Ruby’s safety when with him, because it felt like mixed messaging and sometimes I found myself getting annoyed on his behalf! (Not something I want to be feeling about the MC’s ex in a romance novel!) I felt like we were *told* that Claire was worried about him leaving and upsetting Ruby, but what we *saw* was that she thought her daughter was literally unsafe with him, which left me wondering why the fuck she would let Ruby even visit him? In the first few chapters, she shows up unannounced at his apartment on a night when Ruby is staying with him and freaks out because he forgot to turn the oven off after dinner - which obviously isn’t great, but also, my parents definitely did that at least once when I was a kid, and our house didn’t burn down, nor was it even a big deal. She also complains/worries multiple times about Ruby staying up an hour past her bedtime when at Josh’s, but later in the book Ruby leaves a sleepover at 3 am - so it’s okay for her to be up literally all night at a friend’s house, but not to watch a movie with her dad? I know I’m ranting a bit here, but I really did NOT want to be on Josh’s side, yet I couldn’t help it! I wish instead of Claire being overprotective, she’d been worrying about future plans he was making with Ruby, to make it clear that his leaving, rather than his parenting skills, are what concern her.This also would have made the emotional impact when she thinks he has left again much greater.
If you’re looking for a spicy queer romance, this might fit the bill for you - it’s pretty standard as romance novels go, and clearly I had some issues with it, but lots of other people were not bothered by those things and liked it, so take my review with a grain of salt! Personally, I will not be picking up the next book in the series.
I was excited going into this because of how many people I saw enjoying it but I have to say…I was not impressed. In my opinion, it was not very well written - a lot of the language felt very rote and overused, and none of the descriptions of the romance felt specific or unique. Obviously in romance novels there are certain emotional beats the readers expect you to hit, but I also expect a bit of creativity in the wording if possible, and this book really missed the mark.
I also found myself getting annoyed with a lot of the characters. Delilah still has a major chip on her shoulder about being excluded by Astrid & co when they were teenagers, to the point where it seems to be the basis for most of her personality and decisions. I get that she had a shitty childhood and that as a kid she couldn’t see the nuance of the situation, but to be thirty and still not able to look beyond your own experiences to realize that the other people involved were also children at the time?
As for Claire - I wish that the book had focused more on her fear that Josh would leave her & Ruby again, rather than her worries about Ruby’s safety when with him, because it felt like mixed messaging and sometimes I found myself getting annoyed on his behalf! (Not something I want to be feeling about the MC’s ex in a romance novel!) I felt like we were *told* that Claire was worried about him leaving and upsetting Ruby, but what we *saw* was that she thought her daughter was literally unsafe with him, which left me wondering why the fuck she would let Ruby even visit him? In the first few chapters, she shows up unannounced at his apartment on a night when Ruby is staying with him and freaks out because he forgot to turn the oven off after dinner - which obviously isn’t great, but also, my parents definitely did that at least once when I was a kid, and our house didn’t burn down, nor was it even a big deal. She also complains/worries multiple times about Ruby staying up an hour past her bedtime when at Josh’s, but later in the book Ruby leaves a sleepover at 3 am - so it’s okay for her to be up literally all night at a friend’s house, but not to watch a movie with her dad? I know I’m ranting a bit here, but I really did NOT want to be on Josh’s side, yet I couldn’t help it! I wish instead of Claire being overprotective, she’d been worrying about future plans he was making with Ruby, to make it clear that his leaving, rather than his parenting skills, are what concern her.
If you’re looking for a spicy queer romance, this might fit the bill for you - it’s pretty standard as romance novels go, and clearly I had some issues with it, but lots of other people were not bothered by those things and liked it, so take my review with a grain of salt! Personally, I will not be picking up the next book in the series.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Minor: Abandonment and Death of parent