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A review by pn_hinton
The Bittersweet Bride by Vanessa Riley
3.0
This book took a very long time for me to get through and I had to force myself through most of it. That alone makes me sad because I really wanted to enjoy this book more than I did with it being a historical and interracial romance from a period *other* than the Civil War. But for me the execution missed the mark. A lot of this had to do with the trope of misunderstanding being dragged out way longer than it should have been on both parts.
The hero was an emo man-boy for roughly the first quarter/two-thirds of the book, not believing the heroine and what she said his family did even while being very aware that they were racist as all get out. In truth, he was completely unlikeable for most of the book and it was only his efforts at the end that edged this book to the three stars. The heroine wasn’t all that great herself since she didn’t seem to have much of a backbone at all until almost the very end of the book. Again, eventually she did at the same time Ewan become somewhat marginally likeable, but that was towards the end of the book before either didn’t make me groan and/or roll my eyes every other page.
It’s not that I’m not a fan of the misunderstanding trope because when done well it is enjoyable. It just dragged on too long in this book and the cycle got tedious very quickly. It also took the story entirely too long to find its footing and direct path. Some of the phrasing used also seemed out of period or misplaced for the situation so that was a bit jarring. Overall, this book just dragged, and the hero and the heroine required more patience than necessary from each other and the reader to be thought of as endearing.
The hero was an emo man-boy for roughly the first quarter/two-thirds of the book, not believing the heroine and what she said his family did even while being very aware that they were racist as all get out. In truth, he was completely unlikeable for most of the book and it was only his efforts at the end that edged this book to the three stars. The heroine wasn’t all that great herself since she didn’t seem to have much of a backbone at all until almost the very end of the book. Again, eventually she did at the same time Ewan become somewhat marginally likeable, but that was towards the end of the book before either didn’t make me groan and/or roll my eyes every other page.
It’s not that I’m not a fan of the misunderstanding trope because when done well it is enjoyable. It just dragged on too long in this book and the cycle got tedious very quickly. It also took the story entirely too long to find its footing and direct path. Some of the phrasing used also seemed out of period or misplaced for the situation so that was a bit jarring. Overall, this book just dragged, and the hero and the heroine required more patience than necessary from each other and the reader to be thought of as endearing.