Here’s my thesis: this book wasn’t a romance, it was a tragedy.

(and if Tolstoy had written it, Gigi would’ve been hit by a train)

This was the classic: a messy marriage in trouble romance. Nothing like filing for divorce to get the band back together 😆

And so much of this book was top-tier.
▪️ the writing was flowy, lovely, and even funny
▪️ there was an elegance to how the drama of the two timelines mirrored each other
▪️ the setting felt rich, with a late Victorian jadedness to these histrom nobles (bonus points for the profusion of post-HRE impoverished European titles)
▪️ and there was a romance sub-plot in here involving the heroine’s widowed mother that I enjoyed (not least because it included a lot of Homer and Plato references)

There were some unpopular tropes that I personally love (for the angst) like miscommunication, cheating, thoroughly unlikeable characters.

But. It wasn’t a romance.
▪️ there wasn’t even a gesture towards a romance plot. It was “love at first sight” (actual quote), no on-page falling, and we never took off from Instalove-Landia Airport despite all the drama
▪️ this story showed me a thousand ways that these MCs were incompatible. And I just wanted to see them work through ONE problem. Just a little one. Because I don’t think this couple would survive even the simplest IKEA furniture building collab 😅
▪️ remember how I said the timelines elegantly mirrored each other? As elegant as it was, it’s also the reason this was a tragedy—the plot structure was too “A to B to A” with the sad parts just remerging at the end

By the midway point, I was nervous I wasn’t going to get the grovel and/or love-demonstrating reconciliation finale I wanted. And then I was genuinely disappointed.

But maybe the end isn’t the point, it’s the angsty tropes we meet along the way?