A review by teniamonet
Can't Resist Her by Kianna Alexander

lighthearted medium-paced

• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

1.0

Found this book through Kindle Unlimited and when I saw this was a Black sapphic second chance romance I was so excited. Gave this book a chance because it was free and the cover was cute, was kind of disappointed with it. I wanted to like it more than I did. I almost dnfed it multiple times but pushed through and finished. 

Summer and Aiko find themselves on opposite sides of a situation in their home town. 

Honestly for the first half of the book I felt like it was repetitive and dragged a bit. I switched back and forth between reading and listening to the audio book when I felt like not finishing. 

The writing felt so clunky. At times I felt like there was just too much detail that didn’t add anything to the plot or the characters. The author did so much telling and not enough showing, also did I need every single outfit to be described? I certainly didn’t need a full rundown of Summer’s mundane day that added nothing to the plot or the romance. Dialogue was bad and I didn’t see where the real chemistry between the characters came from which is why I couldn’t get into the romance. There wasn’t enough to like the characters or feel an attachment to them. I barely managed to get through this.

When Summer tells Aiko she loves her I remember thinking “what is it that makes you love her?”. 

I understand Summer’s stance on her grandmother’s legacy, community and gentrification; but my god it was exhausting. I suppose it was interesting to place Summer and Aiko on opposite sides of a gentrification issue, but I just couldn’t get with them being together when clearly their values and beliefs didn’t align. 

Yeah this is a sapphic book for sure because falling in love off a kiss shared more than 20 years ago and 2 dates to then get married in 8 months is insane. 

Spice Rating: *reserved for the romance genre or books with an appropriate substantial romance subplot* this rating is meant to categorize the level of spice not how much i enjoyed it. this is a completely subjective thing.

level 2 (🌶🌶) = less detailed love scenes and the love scenes would probably be very short, there would probably only be like one in like a standard length book. flowery language (or euphemisms) like "member", "cavern"