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A review by oitb
The Devil You Know by Liz Carlyle
3.0
This is a super interesting book. It's super introspective and digs deep into character backgrounds and the way childhood experiences shape adult lives in a significant way — and perhaps more significantly than anyone ever realizes — and Liz Carlyle takes good care of both characters in this regard. (The hero does get a bigger backstory than the heroine, but the heroine's arc doesn't suffer too much for it.)
In terms of the storytelling, I did wish everything was tighter — there were some chunks of the book where I found the plot got away from the story Carlyle was trying to tell. I also feel like while this could probably work as a standalone, I found it confusing not having read the first two books in the story, as the elder brother (hero of book 1) is featured heavily, and it probably would have helped to read his book first.
My other issue with the book — and this is more a critique of the time period when it was written/published — is that the heroine very much feels like a trash receptacle for all of the hero's bad behavior, and she persists/deals with it by being patient and loving and caring. There's not really any acknowledgment in the text that the heroine feels like she deserves better and will stop putting up with the hero's bullshit at a certain point. And to a degree, this kind of thinking is endemic to patriarchal society, but it's extra pronounced in books written prior to the last 5-10 years or so.
In terms of the storytelling, I did wish everything was tighter — there were some chunks of the book where I found the plot got away from the story Carlyle was trying to tell. I also feel like while this could probably work as a standalone, I found it confusing not having read the first two books in the story, as the elder brother (hero of book 1) is featured heavily, and it probably would have helped to read his book first.
My other issue with the book — and this is more a critique of the time period when it was written/published — is that the heroine very much feels like a trash receptacle for all of the hero's bad behavior, and she persists/deals with it by being patient and loving and caring. There's not really any acknowledgment in the text that the heroine feels like she deserves better and will stop putting up with the hero's bullshit at a certain point. And to a degree, this kind of thinking is endemic to patriarchal society, but it's extra pronounced in books written prior to the last 5-10 years or so.