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A review by el_tayo
The Bluff by Emma St. Clair
4.0
This was mostly successful for me.
- I always enjoy St Clair's writing
- I thought she did a fantastic job of getting the reader in James's head - you could really feeeel his anxiety building and it felt like an anvil on my own chest
- Winnie was nicely developed also. When you have a story where one party is classified as the "grump", it's easy to fall into the trap of only focusing on the growth arc of that one character. Winnie had a bit of growing to do as well and I'm glad that got some focus.
- Backstory. The difference between average romance reads and excellent reads are where there's more going on that just getting two characters from point A to B. Both Winnie and James felt fully formed. And the world around them felt fully formed also.
- The accountability was also nice. If we didn't get James introspecting on how his behaviour was not above board majority of the time, or his family checking him, or Winnie sticking up for herself I would have hated this and roasted it accordingly. But St Clair nicely balanced it all out, and it didn't feel like Winnie was putting up with being treated poorly because of attraction (a huge point of contention that I wish will travel across all romance books!). This was also helped by James's POV which was super necessary hear in giving him necessary layers, so we didn't just get him being a jerk to Winnie.
The reason this isn't 5 stars is mainly because of pacing. It felt like the book lost a lot of momentum at just over the halfway mark, and I started skimming a little. I think what helped The Buy In was there was a tangible plotline that forced the story along with the parental rights thread and timeframe. In this, it was supposed to be the launch of the brewery and that felt like a much looser plot so it didn't feel necessary to the story somehow. So around the third quarter of the book I started to feel a little bored.
I also started getting a litttttlle over James's grimpy sthick. It's a fine line between being a lovable grump and being a jerk, and while he was mostly on the right side of that line, sometimes it felt a little like he should get some proper therapy before diving in with Winnie's super soft heart.
Anyhoo, can't wait for more.
- I always enjoy St Clair's writing
- I thought she did a fantastic job of getting the reader in James's head - you could really feeeel his anxiety building and it felt like an anvil on my own chest
- Winnie was nicely developed also. When you have a story where one party is classified as the "grump", it's easy to fall into the trap of only focusing on the growth arc of that one character. Winnie had a bit of growing to do as well and I'm glad that got some focus.
- Backstory. The difference between average romance reads and excellent reads are where there's more going on that just getting two characters from point A to B. Both Winnie and James felt fully formed. And the world around them felt fully formed also.
- The accountability was also nice. If we didn't get James introspecting on how his behaviour was not above board majority of the time, or his family checking him, or Winnie sticking up for herself I would have hated this and roasted it accordingly. But St Clair nicely balanced it all out, and it didn't feel like Winnie was putting up with being treated poorly because of attraction (a huge point of contention that I wish will travel across all romance books!). This was also helped by James's POV which was super necessary hear in giving him necessary layers, so we didn't just get him being a jerk to Winnie.
The reason this isn't 5 stars is mainly because of pacing. It felt like the book lost a lot of momentum at just over the halfway mark, and I started skimming a little. I think what helped The Buy In was there was a tangible plotline that forced the story along with the parental rights thread and timeframe. In this, it was supposed to be the launch of the brewery and that felt like a much looser plot so it didn't feel necessary to the story somehow. So around the third quarter of the book I started to feel a little bored.
I also started getting a litttttlle over James's grimpy sthick. It's a fine line between being a lovable grump and being a jerk, and while he was mostly on the right side of that line, sometimes it felt a little like he should get some proper therapy before diving in with Winnie's super soft heart.
Anyhoo, can't wait for more.