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yourbookishbff's reviews
621 reviews
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.5
Moderate: Misogyny, Sexual content, Grief, Abandonment
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.5
Moderate: Death, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma
Minor: Sexual content, Blood
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Colleen Kelly's writing is just stunning, and I can hardly believe newsletter subscribers get another of her novellas for free. This novella is a prequel to her first (The Earl I Want for Christmas) and gives us Lydia's older brother's love story (and sweet glimpses into her friendship with her sister-in-law as a teenager!). These could easily be read in either order.
Most impressive to me in this particular story is how well-developed each character feels in a tight page count. Kelly uses a one-night-stand premise to give us glimpses into each character that she later inverts through deeper character study. Our duke shows immediate emotional vulnerability with the lovelorn actress he meets at an inn (vulnerability that feels shocking to the reader in retrospect), and our lovelorn actress evinces emotional detachment and confident seduction with the mysterious duke that reveals itself to be a painstaking facade. I loved seeing how each character is unwound after their first whirlwind encounter and how Kelly needs to then bring them back together in a meaningful way. There are several beats in this I LOVED (hasty declarations, possessiveness, ruination subverted, and more), and even with a premise that can be a miss for me (one-night-stands don't always deliver the emotional build-up I enjoy!), this felt just right in its journey to the HEA.
And I'm not kidding about Kelly's prose:
"A stunned pause while his mind turned over her words before he felt - with sudden surprise, like an animal sprung from a fatal trap - Joy. An eruption of it sweeping through him. Bright light dazzling his senses, casting the entire world in a hazy golden aura. She would be his in truth, bound forever, unshakably, unbreakably, and she would - She would not like that."
"He didn't know how to respond: gratefully or blithely or matter-of-factly. He couldn't tell which she would prefer, and he wanted to be what she preferred. So he said nothing."
"Elizabeth Langham deserved devotion and adoration and action and zeal, and though he might only have wits enough for the first two, he was going to do his damnedest to give her the entire catalogue."
"His voice was rough as stone sheared from a cliffside, hard and miserable, and she wanted to smooth it like water over glass."
"She felt - not herself. Or more herself than the limits of her body could contain. She threatened to overflow her boundaries, leak as messily onto the floor as the water that had pooled at his feet."
"As always, Rex looked for his wife, for the gold of her hair shimmering in the crowd. As always, something shifted inside him when he saw her, the essential core of loneliness that had accompanied him throughout his life slackening, turned beautiful as a basketful of silken thread waiting to be embroidered by her delicate hand."
Moderate: Sexual content, Grief, Death of parent
Minor: Infidelity
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
3.5
Moderate: Classism
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Saving grace for this book is NED. I cannot wait for his story, and I absolutely cheered for his third act appearances in this one.
Graphic: Classism
Moderate: Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Abandonment, Alcohol
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Moderate: Sexual content
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Violence, Medical content, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Murder
Moderate: Racism, Slavery, War
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
And then at about the 55% mark the romance comes in like a wrecking ball, and it becomes swoon-city. I absolutely adore the dynamic Hadley builds for Arthur and James and the ways in which they use play, intimacy and emotional vulnerability to help each other explore gender and sexual identity. Hadley is using sex in particular to further each character's developing sense of self and gender in ways that are nuanced and realistically messy, and I love how much room she gives her characters to get it really, really wrong sometimes (looking at you, Eve). These are absolutely adults in their early 20s living through second-wave feminism and free love, so expect high drama, lots of codependency, and sex-will-fix-this-right approaches to problem solving.
Also, do not miss the author's note! Excellent context for terminology (Arthur is experiencing a bi-awakening and a developing sense of gender nonconformity without a lot of the descriptive identity language he would have access to today).
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, Transphobia
Minor: Sexism, War, Classism
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Minor: Death, Death of parent
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Classism
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Sexism, Sexual content