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1943tre 's review for:
The Last Word
by Katy Birchall
2.5 rounded up. I'm really on the hunt for a great journalism romance, and this is the second I've read this year...and so far...nope. Still haven't found it.
This was just fine. The writing was competent and unobtrusive (but definitely not lyrical or literary in any way). But it was missing...something. I don't think I fully connected to the voice. A lot of reviewers found Harper super annoying, but I don't necessarily think she was *so* annoying, but rather just forgettable. Ryan also lacked a certain compelling quality. I'm allllll about a stern no-nonsense grump, but I felt like Birchall didn't fully commit to this opposites-attract trope, because it was missing some heat. When Ryan confesses his love, I was like caught off guard. Why are you so obsessed with Harper lol? Since when? None of their interactions were 1) super hot/charged or 2) dreamy/swoon-worthy. I need at least one of those in a romance lol.
The pacing here is definitely a problem. It took like 20% before we even got Harper and Ryan interacting. That's WAY too long for me given the genre. And I WOULD categorize this as romance over women's fiction. There's some exploration of Harper's relationship with her parents and her career, but I still felt like the relationship took center stage and was ultimately more interesting. The timeline was also strange here. We got maybe like 3-4 sections of a "ten years earlier" timeline, mostly in the middle of the book. I would have preferred for most of that to be back story interspersed in the main timeline because it wasn't electric enough to be worth disrupting the forward momentum of the current timeline.
Spice-wise this was technically open door but tame. Again, it lacked a certain heat that, frankly, enemies-to-lovers requires. There were like two makeout scenes, 1 fade-to-black sex scene, and 1 open door sex scene––none of which were exciting enough for me to want to re-read.
Nothing *critically* wrong with this book––it's not, like, offensive or absurd or badly written, but it was forgettable, and I'm not sure I'd recommend unless you're particularly hungry for a journalism romance set in Britain.
This was just fine. The writing was competent and unobtrusive (but definitely not lyrical or literary in any way). But it was missing...something. I don't think I fully connected to the voice. A lot of reviewers found Harper super annoying, but I don't necessarily think she was *so* annoying, but rather just forgettable. Ryan also lacked a certain compelling quality. I'm allllll about a stern no-nonsense grump, but I felt like Birchall didn't fully commit to this opposites-attract trope, because it was missing some heat. When Ryan confesses his love, I was like caught off guard. Why are you so obsessed with Harper lol? Since when? None of their interactions were 1) super hot/charged or 2) dreamy/swoon-worthy. I need at least one of those in a romance lol.
The pacing here is definitely a problem. It took like 20% before we even got Harper and Ryan interacting. That's WAY too long for me given the genre. And I WOULD categorize this as romance over women's fiction. There's some exploration of Harper's relationship with her parents and her career, but I still felt like the relationship took center stage and was ultimately more interesting. The timeline was also strange here. We got maybe like 3-4 sections of a "ten years earlier" timeline, mostly in the middle of the book. I would have preferred for most of that to be back story interspersed in the main timeline because it wasn't electric enough to be worth disrupting the forward momentum of the current timeline.
Spice-wise this was technically open door but tame. Again, it lacked a certain heat that, frankly, enemies-to-lovers requires. There were like two makeout scenes, 1 fade-to-black sex scene, and 1 open door sex scene––none of which were exciting enough for me to want to re-read.
Nothing *critically* wrong with this book––it's not, like, offensive or absurd or badly written, but it was forgettable, and I'm not sure I'd recommend unless you're particularly hungry for a journalism romance set in Britain.