libraryofthieves 's review for:

Love in Focus by Lyla Lee

3.0

---

Thank you Forever for the ARC and Hachette Audio for the ALC!

There were some things I liked about this but overall it didn’t really work for me. I liked the representation and discussion around not seeing elder queer people who look like you but I wanted to like the relationship more than I did. 

Gemma was ok but Celeste annoyed me. She never really took responsibility for how she ended their relationship years ago. Instead she continued to be upset that Gemma moved on after a few months, even though she’s the one who left without a word! And Gemma apologizes for it?? And god forbid she moved on with a man 😱 that line of ‘a lesbians worst nightmare’ really bothered me and felt super biphobic. I just couldn’t get past how caught up Celeste was about Gemma moving on, making it a huge deal when she’s the one who did something wrong, and then using that as an excuse to not pursue things in the present. 

I also didn’t love the switching of tenses and point of views between the two women. It felt unnecessary and jarring and honestly with how little we saw from Celeste’s POV it felt like hers could have been cut entirely. They didn’t really add anything to the story. 

The narrator for Gemma did a great job but I didn’t love Celeste’s narration. It was too slow and lacked emotional variation. It also didn’t match the tone of the other narrator and because we hear so much more from her, it felt wrong. 

Overall, it had some good moments and I liked the concept but it just didn’t execute it well enough.