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johannawuhu 's review for:
The Paradise Problem
by Christina Lauren
Spoilers ahead!!
First of all, Anna keeps referring to Liam’s penis as his Goddamn and this made me want to chuck the book into oblivion every single time.
First of all, Anna keeps referring to Liam’s penis as his Goddamn and this made me want to chuck the book into oblivion every single time.
She also describes how she would paint certain scenes mentioning each individual colour and this felt over the top.
Most importantly, though, she teaches art at a college in the end and claims that it’s great to speak to the students’ fears of not making it WHEN THIS GIRL CAN ONLY SUSTAIN HERSELF BECAUSE SHE MARRIED RICH. STFU.
There is soooome class consciousness and criticism of capitalism and the obnoxiously rich, but not nearly enough to where we traverse from cirticising individuals and groups to criticising the systems that make them.
And I know this is a romance novel why am I expecting this level of complexity?? BECAUSE I DO. Idgaf. If you want to write about rich people and how their relationships to money interfere with their ability to love, and from the perspective of someone actively struggling under capitalism and america’s health care system, then I need more than “omg my dad is so mean :((( come and kiss it better?”
And I know this is not how romance goes but this weird middle ground is very irritating and also Liam was so annoying. The epilogue has a line that goes “It might seem strange to those of us who grew up without money to imagine wealth ever being a burden, but (…)” like okay cry me a river??
And it’s also hard to believe that Anna can get over him probably just not understanding her background at all.
Would have been way better as Anna and Blaire fall in love.
Christina Lauren are so SO hit or miss and this is a clear miss.
They also kept referring to having sex as making love. Stop it.
Maybe it’s time for me to say goodbye to the conventional romance genre, but then again maybe the romance here was just not interesting enough to distract me from everything that’s off in this book.