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devontrevarrowflaherty 's review for:
Well, Actually
by Mazey Eddings
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Perhaps I should have DNFed this one and put it in the ALC (advanced listener copy) graveyard where it could have avoided any scathing reviews. But I didn’t.
As some of you may recall, I have been listening to advance reader copies of books as a bookseller, which allows me to weed out some books before I purchase them. When I started to listen to Well, Actually (which has zero to do with the cult classic movie Love, Actually) by Mazey Eddings, I was of two minds about whether to continue listening. There was something there, some little spark and sass that I wanted to hear more of. But I was initially annoyed not about the things that eventually really bothered me, but about the shoe-horning in of “alternative lifestyles,” like a checklist. And general shock-value kind of writing (like with lots of swearing and edgy moments). But I kept listening. Long before the end, I became disenchanted. I didn’t hate it, but I ultimately found little merit in this book and even less in the audio version.
Synopsis: (Black cat and golden retriever romance, though the retriever has done something in the past that really brings out the cat’s claws.) Eva was going to have a career in heavy-hitting journalism, but at 30 she finds herself interviewing B-list entertainers while salaciously eating hotdogs. (It’s a whole thing.) Right at the moment her boss’s son starts threatening her upward mobility, she drunk-posts and spills the tea on a beloved influencer whose schtick is teaching men how to respect women—and who once upon a time had an ugly one-night fling and ghosted Eva. To save both their careers, he offers to take Eva on six dates, letting her vent on his podcast about each one, see if he has changed. But she’s much more interested in saving her career than in giving this guy even one inch.
Let’s take a moment to point out that so far on Goodreads (published about a month ago), the rating is 3.8, which isn’t terribly shabby. The most common rating is a 4, the 3s and 5s being about even. Some people have written reviews with lots of exclamation points and heart-eye emojis. Moment over.
The worst part about this experience for me was the audiobook reader’s voice for Riley Cooper. It was just so bad and so distracting. Please, ladies, don’t try to sound like a dude when you read audiobooks, especially like some hot and horny, disaffected guy. It made understanding and liking Riley really difficult. Probably if I read this book in paper form, I would have liked him better and been less appalled by (and more into) their relationship.
That said, there were some other more substantial things that ultimately didn’t work for me. I’m just going to touch on a few.
A small thing: Riley’s name kept changing, which really confused me at first. For some reason, the narrator (inside Eva’s head, of course—oh, modern romance!) kept switching between his being Riley and Cooper.
A medium thing: take this with a grain of salt because I don’t read many books this high on the spice scale. (For what it’s worth, I didn’t realize this was going to be a 4.) But I found the erotic scenes to be so detailed and phrased that they were almost medical or scientific. I think a little nuance and a little mystery in the spicy scenes goes a long way. I suppose it might have also felt that way because I wasn’t buying into the (supposedly) growing romance that much, anyhow. I am tired (and bored) of first-person romances with the MC swooning over the physical merits of the romantic lead in straight-forward statements. In other words, give me some depth. Give me an attraction that goes more than skin-deep. (This book did the second part, eventually.) And show me, don’t tell me. “He was hot!” “He had a great butt.” Blah, blah, blah. Show me this guy (or gal), then give me clues, physical reactions, dialogue, emotions that make me understand an attraction. Just because I’m in a character’s head doesn’t mean I want to be spoon-fed a story. In fact, I never want to be spoon-fed a story.
A large thing: the friends bowed out. They like disappeared from the story for the vast majority of it. There was a cast of quirky sidekicks—as all romances should have—but they played no significant role in the plot. Which left us alone in Eva’s apartment and in her head for way too much of it. There were few to no sub-plots, few to no meaningful relationships besides the main one. By the end, I was sick of Eva, felt like she grew very little, and wondered what these other characters were even there for.
The biggest thing: I did not find the characters to be consistent. I actually just encountered this same issue in another book (which I DNFed); the author wanted to give us complex characters but instead gave us bits and pieces that didn’t seem to fit together. Which means that I didn’t believe half of what Eva was saying in her inner dialogue and maybe even less than what I was seeing acted out. She kept telling me that she felt a certain way despite appearances or that Riley was whatever, but I couldn’t believe her when the characters were contradictory enigmas, and their reactions weren’t consistent within themselves and random-given-the-situation.
A very small thing: why is a respecter of women calling the female lead Kitten all the time?! And why is she letting him?!
In the end, I thought the story was okay, but the writing wasn’t enough to seamlessly take me anywhere. I also loved the premise, and there were times when I was definitely entertained. But I struggled through other parts. Again, it was more the writing style that didn’t do it for me. I wasn’t always clear on things. And I wasn’t always asking questions or invested. I was often disbelieving. I didn’t, like, know what spaces or people looked like. It was fine if you don’t care about literary things and can just sketch in your own reality without complaining. I had some fun. I have basically forgotten most of it already.
***BOOK REVIEW WRITTEN FOR THE STARVING ARTIST BLOG***
As some of you may recall, I have been listening to advance reader copies of books as a bookseller, which allows me to weed out some books before I purchase them. When I started to listen to Well, Actually (which has zero to do with the cult classic movie Love, Actually) by Mazey Eddings, I was of two minds about whether to continue listening. There was something there, some little spark and sass that I wanted to hear more of. But I was initially annoyed not about the things that eventually really bothered me, but about the shoe-horning in of “alternative lifestyles,” like a checklist. And general shock-value kind of writing (like with lots of swearing and edgy moments). But I kept listening. Long before the end, I became disenchanted. I didn’t hate it, but I ultimately found little merit in this book and even less in the audio version.
Synopsis: (Black cat and golden retriever romance, though the retriever has done something in the past that really brings out the cat’s claws.) Eva was going to have a career in heavy-hitting journalism, but at 30 she finds herself interviewing B-list entertainers while salaciously eating hotdogs. (It’s a whole thing.) Right at the moment her boss’s son starts threatening her upward mobility, she drunk-posts and spills the tea on a beloved influencer whose schtick is teaching men how to respect women—and who once upon a time had an ugly one-night fling and ghosted Eva. To save both their careers, he offers to take Eva on six dates, letting her vent on his podcast about each one, see if he has changed. But she’s much more interested in saving her career than in giving this guy even one inch.
Let’s take a moment to point out that so far on Goodreads (published about a month ago), the rating is 3.8, which isn’t terribly shabby. The most common rating is a 4, the 3s and 5s being about even. Some people have written reviews with lots of exclamation points and heart-eye emojis. Moment over.
The worst part about this experience for me was the audiobook reader’s voice for Riley Cooper. It was just so bad and so distracting. Please, ladies, don’t try to sound like a dude when you read audiobooks, especially like some hot and horny, disaffected guy. It made understanding and liking Riley really difficult. Probably if I read this book in paper form, I would have liked him better and been less appalled by (and more into) their relationship.
That said, there were some other more substantial things that ultimately didn’t work for me. I’m just going to touch on a few.
A small thing: Riley’s name kept changing, which really confused me at first. For some reason, the narrator (inside Eva’s head, of course—oh, modern romance!) kept switching between his being Riley and Cooper.
A medium thing: take this with a grain of salt because I don’t read many books this high on the spice scale. (For what it’s worth, I didn’t realize this was going to be a 4.) But I found the erotic scenes to be so detailed and phrased that they were almost medical or scientific. I think a little nuance and a little mystery in the spicy scenes goes a long way. I suppose it might have also felt that way because I wasn’t buying into the (supposedly) growing romance that much, anyhow. I am tired (and bored) of first-person romances with the MC swooning over the physical merits of the romantic lead in straight-forward statements. In other words, give me some depth. Give me an attraction that goes more than skin-deep. (This book did the second part, eventually.) And show me, don’t tell me. “He was hot!” “He had a great butt.” Blah, blah, blah. Show me this guy (or gal), then give me clues, physical reactions, dialogue, emotions that make me understand an attraction. Just because I’m in a character’s head doesn’t mean I want to be spoon-fed a story. In fact, I never want to be spoon-fed a story.
A large thing: the friends bowed out. They like disappeared from the story for the vast majority of it. There was a cast of quirky sidekicks—as all romances should have—but they played no significant role in the plot. Which left us alone in Eva’s apartment and in her head for way too much of it. There were few to no sub-plots, few to no meaningful relationships besides the main one. By the end, I was sick of Eva, felt like she grew very little, and wondered what these other characters were even there for.
The biggest thing: I did not find the characters to be consistent. I actually just encountered this same issue in another book (which I DNFed); the author wanted to give us complex characters but instead gave us bits and pieces that didn’t seem to fit together. Which means that I didn’t believe half of what Eva was saying in her inner dialogue and maybe even less than what I was seeing acted out. She kept telling me that she felt a certain way despite appearances or that Riley was whatever, but I couldn’t believe her when the characters were contradictory enigmas, and their reactions weren’t consistent within themselves and random-given-the-situation.
A very small thing: why is a respecter of women calling the female lead Kitten all the time?! And why is she letting him?!
In the end, I thought the story was okay, but the writing wasn’t enough to seamlessly take me anywhere. I also loved the premise, and there were times when I was definitely entertained. But I struggled through other parts. Again, it was more the writing style that didn’t do it for me. I wasn’t always clear on things. And I wasn’t always asking questions or invested. I was often disbelieving. I didn’t, like, know what spaces or people looked like. It was fine if you don’t care about literary things and can just sketch in your own reality without complaining. I had some fun. I have basically forgotten most of it already.
***BOOK REVIEW WRITTEN FOR THE STARVING ARTIST BLOG***