rachbreads 's review for:

The Geographer's Map to Romance by India Holton

3.5

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The last thing he needed was someone in his life turning what ought to be a straightforward journey into a wonder-filled ramble.

...damn he wished something in the vicinity would explode before he injured his brain permanently, trying to come up with poetic descriptions for the woman. Poetic! As if he’d been educated at a community college!

The romance in this book gets 5 stars, the funny/clever writing gets a 4, and the plot/story gets like a...2? I had so much fun reading this book - the yearning, pining, etc. was absolute god-tier and I loved the quirky, clever writing. But I could not for the life of me figure out what was happening with the plot. I think in the effort to lean into the quirkiness, the author created the most inscrutable magic system that somehow blended with history? But the strings of 5 syllable words which read like nonsense were just not working for me, and my brain kept going over whole paragraphs without understanding what was happening at all so I had to reread. But then I chose to reread certain paragraphs because the romantic writing was so good or we got Gabriel being so deliciously, hilariously grumpily in love that I couldn't handle it. 

If you, like me, absolutely live for a dual-POV pining/yearning romance, then I think you'll enjoy this one.