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toosharpbyhalf's reviews
41 reviews
A Summer to Remember by Mary Balogh
5.0
Adored this. It starts out looking like a tiresome tale of a man betting he can seduce a woman but a t a pivotal moment a few chapters in it totally undercuts the awfulness of that premise and gives the women total agency. The way Kit and Lauren complete each other made me very happy.
The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
4.0
I was expecting a Regency fantasy romance, which this technically is, but the romance was the b-story. This is actually a raw, fierce book about feminism and how nightmarish it is to be trapped in a world where a patriarchal society tries to take away your power and agency at every turn. The heroine is to be forcibly married off and that means wearing a collar that robs her of her magic for the rest of her life, because if she gets pregnant and uses magic there's a risk of her unborn baby being possessed. When you live in a world where women in some US States are being denied healthcare because of the slightest possibility they could be pregnant this feels so relevant. Although there's a passionate and determined main character and a happy ending this book really hit hard for me because of the themes, so definitely be aware of that going in. It's also well-written, vividly imagined and diverse with complicated characters.