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A review by elenajohansen
Pucked Up Love by Lili Valente
2.0
As sweet as the story could be sometimes, I felt like both Will and Hailey had muddled conflict and character arcs, which resulted in the story being weaker overall than it could have been.
Let's start with Will. He's a Dom but he shelved that because when he got together with Hailey she was young and a virgin. Whether or not that was the "right" thing to do from any larger perspective, in terms of honesty or protectiveness or female empowerment or whatever, Will successfully stopped being a Dom for the five years of their relationship. They didn't break up because he couldn't handle denying that part of himself anymore; he never brought it up at all, Hailey overheard someone else asking him about it.
She quite rightfully was upset that she didn't know this big thing about the man she was possibly about to marry, and ghosted him, basically.
But neither ever fell out of love with the other, and that's the first problem with this story's conflict--when I stopped to ask myself, at various points through the book, the "why aren't they together now?" question that's so vital to a well-paced and -plotted romance, the answer was usually just "One or both of them has their head up their ass, and not in a reasonable or relatable way." Will tries to keep their new teacher/student relationship just sex first because he mistakenly assumes she's interested in BDSM because of a new man in her life, though that gets cleared up quickly. (More quickly than I expected, actually.) And after that, he's doing it to protect himself from the consequences of failure, if you can even call it that--because what if he lets himself be in love with her again and she turns out not to enjoy all the kink?
That's where my problem with this arc lies--he was perfectly willing to not be a Dom to Hailey for so long, and his Dom-ness wasn't the actual problem she ran from, it was that he never told her about it, which meant you could substitute any sort of deep secret that's not kink and the result would be the same. On top of that, throughout the story Will displays continued interest in being with Hailey no matter how, and eventually states directly that he'd rather be vanilla with Hailey than kinky with anyone else. So, quite literally, what's keeping them apart?
Nothing. Or just Hailey being stuck in her own head about what she needs to be for him, versus being herself, except in the end "being herself" also means being kinky. And while that's a legitimate character arc in terms of growth, it mostly involves her flailing about wildly in terms of personality, not trusting herself in ways that were painful to me to listen to (as I got this on audio) and basically being a wishy-washy uncommunicative woman. For all that Will stressed honesty and communication as necessary to "the game," both of them at various points in the plot fall down on that, in ways that felt more frustrating than understandable.
It's really interesting to me to read other reviews that skewer Will for his actions, because in the end, from my perspective, Will never did all that much wrong. Sure, he probably should have told Hailey at some point during that first relationship about his Dom tendencies, I'll agree with that. But throughout the entire story he consistently put Hailey's needs before his own, while she floundered about trying not to be a hot mess. Yes, the whole point of the plot was that she was attempting to change herself "for a man," and that's not great, but also Will didn't put her up to it--it was her decision, and coincidence brought them back together. Hailey was consistently the one making snap judgments and bad decisions and inflicting her troubled emotional state on everyone else around her. Honestly, I don't like her much. Her backstory and her inner narrative are constantly harping about what a strong person she is because she's a cancer survivor and a self-defense teacher and a small-business co-owner, but the plot constantly demonstrates she's a deeply confused woman who, despite Will's solid efforts to educate her, doesn't really understand what submissiveness is about, even if she enjoys it in the moment. She first equates submission with weakness (and later with assault and rape culture, which was acutely painful to listen to even if I knew the author didn't believe that because this was Hailey's final obstacle to hurdle over) and even in the end, only figures out that consensual kink is fine because it's consensual and not rapey, but without ever acknowledging that submission requires/encourages a person to be mentally strong, in order to trust and transfer power. I was disappointed she never got there, so her personal arc felt incomplete.
And Will doesn't really change at all.
This is definitely the weakest entry in the series so far, to me, but there's only one left to go, and I really like Bree as a side character so I'm intrigued to see where her romance goes in the final installment.
Let's start with Will. He's a Dom but he shelved that because when he got together with Hailey she was young and a virgin. Whether or not that was the "right" thing to do from any larger perspective, in terms of honesty or protectiveness or female empowerment or whatever, Will successfully stopped being a Dom for the five years of their relationship. They didn't break up because he couldn't handle denying that part of himself anymore; he never brought it up at all, Hailey overheard someone else asking him about it.
She quite rightfully was upset that she didn't know this big thing about the man she was possibly about to marry, and ghosted him, basically.
But neither ever fell out of love with the other, and that's the first problem with this story's conflict--when I stopped to ask myself, at various points through the book, the "why aren't they together now?" question that's so vital to a well-paced and -plotted romance, the answer was usually just "One or both of them has their head up their ass, and not in a reasonable or relatable way." Will tries to keep their new teacher/student relationship just sex first because he mistakenly assumes she's interested in BDSM because of a new man in her life, though that gets cleared up quickly. (More quickly than I expected, actually.) And after that, he's doing it to protect himself from the consequences of failure, if you can even call it that--because what if he lets himself be in love with her again and she turns out not to enjoy all the kink?
That's where my problem with this arc lies--he was perfectly willing to not be a Dom to Hailey for so long, and his Dom-ness wasn't the actual problem she ran from, it was that he never told her about it, which meant you could substitute any sort of deep secret that's not kink and the result would be the same. On top of that, throughout the story Will displays continued interest in being with Hailey no matter how, and eventually states directly that he'd rather be vanilla with Hailey than kinky with anyone else. So, quite literally, what's keeping them apart?
Nothing. Or just Hailey being stuck in her own head about what she needs to be for him, versus being herself, except in the end "being herself" also means being kinky. And while that's a legitimate character arc in terms of growth, it mostly involves her flailing about wildly in terms of personality, not trusting herself in ways that were painful to me to listen to (as I got this on audio) and basically being a wishy-washy uncommunicative woman. For all that Will stressed honesty and communication as necessary to "the game," both of them at various points in the plot fall down on that, in ways that felt more frustrating than understandable.
It's really interesting to me to read other reviews that skewer Will for his actions, because in the end, from my perspective, Will never did all that much wrong. Sure, he probably should have told Hailey at some point during that first relationship about his Dom tendencies, I'll agree with that. But throughout the entire story he consistently put Hailey's needs before his own, while she floundered about trying not to be a hot mess. Yes, the whole point of the plot was that she was attempting to change herself "for a man," and that's not great, but also Will didn't put her up to it--it was her decision, and coincidence brought them back together. Hailey was consistently the one making snap judgments and bad decisions and inflicting her troubled emotional state on everyone else around her. Honestly, I don't like her much. Her backstory and her inner narrative are constantly harping about what a strong person she is because she's a cancer survivor and a self-defense teacher and a small-business co-owner, but the plot constantly demonstrates she's a deeply confused woman who, despite Will's solid efforts to educate her, doesn't really understand what submissiveness is about, even if she enjoys it in the moment. She first equates submission with weakness (and later with assault and rape culture, which was acutely painful to listen to even if I knew the author didn't believe that because this was Hailey's final obstacle to hurdle over) and even in the end, only figures out that consensual kink is fine because it's consensual and not rapey, but without ever acknowledging that submission requires/encourages a person to be mentally strong, in order to trust and transfer power. I was disappointed she never got there, so her personal arc felt incomplete.
And Will doesn't really change at all.
This is definitely the weakest entry in the series so far, to me, but there's only one left to go, and I really like Bree as a side character so I'm intrigued to see where her romance goes in the final installment.