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A review by readthesparrow
A Little Kissing Between Friends by Chencia C. Higgins
Did not finish book. Stopped at 52%.
I got this as an ARC via Netgalley.
When the narrative is doing anything but the romance, I enjoyed it. I loved Juleesa--she's cool, confidant, and I always love found family--and her relationships with her son, Amani, Nana Cherry, and her coworkers was so sweet.
I also love how normal queerness is, and how much the book abashedly romantacizes and lavishes praise on the bodies of its main characters. Also, as a southern food-lover, I loooove the food in this book. Higgins has a way with words when it comes to making me crave BBQ. I'd kill for the potato truck food mentioned in chapter eleven.
But the second the "romance" part of the book starts happening, the narrative just gets so goddamn boring. It's friends to lovers, but all the plot so far has just been miscommunication that happens because Cyn keeps getting hit with the romanceification ray that turns her from a fully fleshed out human adult to a complete mess who can't understand her own feelings (for some reason). All the side characters just stand around making knowing comments implying that they know Cyn and Juleesa are totally In Love and that they're just too stupid to see it. Which, like. Come on! Y'all are friends! Have a conversation!!
Maybe I'm just the wrong audience (I don't usually read contemporary romance) but I don't want to read 300+ pages of actually interesting character moments sandwiched between contrived miscommunication bullshit that doesn't make for an interesting romance.
Also, during the "spicy" scenes of the book, the writing would be fine until some random weird phrase would make me double-take and go wait, what? Like, sorry, but what the fuck ||do "flowers picked from a PUSSY GARDEN"????? smell like???????? Hello?? That phrase literally made me stand up and walk away because I. W H A T.||
Anyway. Yeah. I really wanted to push through for the sake of my Netgalley score but I'm DNFing. I can't take this any more.
When the narrative is doing anything but the romance, I enjoyed it. I loved Juleesa--she's cool, confidant, and I always love found family--and her relationships with her son, Amani, Nana Cherry, and her coworkers was so sweet.
I also love how normal queerness is, and how much the book abashedly romantacizes and lavishes praise on the bodies of its main characters. Also, as a southern food-lover, I loooove the food in this book. Higgins has a way with words when it comes to making me crave BBQ. I'd kill for the potato truck food mentioned in chapter eleven.
But the second the "romance" part of the book starts happening, the narrative just gets so goddamn boring. It's friends to lovers, but all the plot so far has just been miscommunication that happens because Cyn keeps getting hit with the romanceification ray that turns her from a fully fleshed out human adult to a complete mess who can't understand her own feelings (for some reason). All the side characters just stand around making knowing comments implying that they know Cyn and Juleesa are totally In Love and that they're just too stupid to see it. Which, like. Come on! Y'all are friends! Have a conversation!!
Maybe I'm just the wrong audience (I don't usually read contemporary romance) but I don't want to read 300+ pages of actually interesting character moments sandwiched between contrived miscommunication bullshit that doesn't make for an interesting romance.
Also, during the "spicy" scenes of the book, the writing would be fine until some random weird phrase would make me double-take and go wait, what? Like, sorry, but what the fuck ||do "flowers picked from a PUSSY GARDEN"????? smell like???????? Hello?? That phrase literally made me stand up and walk away because I. W H A T.||
Anyway. Yeah. I really wanted to push through for the sake of my Netgalley score but I'm DNFing. I can't take this any more.