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A review by condls27
Marriage for One by Ella Maise
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
I almost DNFed the first time she mentioned pulling a cotton ball out of her nose and SQUEEZING IT but no, I forced myself to power through only to spend hundreds of pages reading about her leaky nose before I finally gave in. What in the ever loving hell Booktok?! I have seen this book recommended by some of my most trusted and beloved book influencers and I feel so bamboozled.
First of all, this book should have 200 pages shorter. Like for real was the author getting paid by the word?! 515 pages of nothing. NOTHING. Unless you count the FMC saying “Jack” 766 times (yes I did look up the exact number).
I have never gotten the ick so violently as I did with both of the MCs. Rose is so horse-girl coded I’m honestly shocked she didn’t gallop everywhere she went. Jack was just a jerk. Not in the powerful, no nonsense lawyer who can be direct but has a heart of gold kind of way. No, he was a jerk in the never learned social skills and doesn’t treat people like human beings kind of way. It was such a turn off. Their dialogue managed to feel both like a giant run on sentence and incredibly stilted. Still baffled by it.
The plot? Nonexistent. I get we have to suspend our disbelief for any marriage of convenience trope but this was a stretch. It’s like the author decided on the tropes before she had an actual plot fleshed out and it just made everything so clunky. We all love a hurt/comfort trope but did you have to make the hurt spinal fluid leaking from her nose?! If you have to force a plot point just to have a specific trope, you lose all of the magic that makes that trope good.
Booktok has done me dirty before but I’ll never forgive them for this one!
First of all, this book should have 200 pages shorter. Like for real was the author getting paid by the word?! 515 pages of nothing. NOTHING. Unless you count the FMC saying “Jack” 766 times (yes I did look up the exact number).
I have never gotten the ick so violently as I did with both of the MCs. Rose is so horse-girl coded I’m honestly shocked she didn’t gallop everywhere she went. Jack was just a jerk. Not in the powerful, no nonsense lawyer who can be direct but has a heart of gold kind of way. No, he was a jerk in the never learned social skills and doesn’t treat people like human beings kind of way. It was such a turn off. Their dialogue managed to feel both like a giant run on sentence and incredibly stilted. Still baffled by it.
The plot? Nonexistent. I get we have to suspend our disbelief for any marriage of convenience trope but this was a stretch. It’s like the author decided on the tropes before she had an actual plot fleshed out and it just made everything so clunky. We all love a hurt/comfort trope but did you have to make the hurt spinal fluid leaking from her nose?! If you have to force a plot point just to have a specific trope, you lose all of the magic that makes that trope good.
Booktok has done me dirty before but I’ll never forgive them for this one!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content and Medical content
Minor: Death of parent