I received this e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

So, a few disclaimers. I'd never read anything by this author prior to picking up this e-ARC. I had no idea who she was. I just saw a super cute rom-com cover with a title that suggested that the book would take inspiration from one of my favorite books of all time.

I am a multi-faceted nerd. I enjoy many hobbies including reading, television, movies, music, crochet, and sports. Mostly football and baseball, but I also have a passing knowledge of other popular sports and athletes. As I was reading this book, which is about a sportswriter trying to catch her big break by interviewing a hot-shot basketball star, I just kept thinking to myself, "This feels like it was written by someone who has never actually been to a sporting event and uses the phrase 'sportsball' to demonstrate some sort of perceived superiority over people who enjoy competitive sport."
So you can imagine my surprise to learn that this woman has been romantically connected to multiple professional athletes, and was a member of the cast of the 'reality' show Basketball Wives for several seasons. She's also a model and spokesperson, shilling countless products on her instagram, including harmful diuretics masquerading as diet drinks. I'm not sure if she was counting on her previous platform as an influencer to help her sell books, but I can't imagine they actually sold on merit, so it must have worked.

I know that I'm being harsh and judgmental, but when I read a book as poorly-written as this pile of nonsense get published while other, more talented writers get overlooked after years and years of working on their craft, I get a little salty. Okay, I get a lot salty. I'm not a writer myself, but I understands how much work goes into writing a quality story.

Now, I understand that this book is an ARC, which technically means that the final copy may be very different from what I just read. And for the sake of any reader who actually picks up a final copy, I hope that's the case. There are just so many technical inaccuracies throughout this book that I'm not even sure where to start. That's not to say anything about the actual characters and plot (both of which were subpar.) Just a couple highlights:

The protagonist's name is Hara Isari. We are told she is African American and Japanese American. In Chapter 14, she tells our Mr. Darcy that her name is Japanese and she didn't realize that she wasn't named after the Greek Goddess Hera until she was in middle school. But that doesn't make sense. The names Hera and Hara wouldn't be pronounced the same if Hara was being pronounced as a Japanese name. Also, being the curious person I am, I looked up the name Hara to see what it means in Japanese. 'Hara' is the Japanese word for 'belly' or 'stomach'. I find it strange that her dad would want to name her 'Belly'. Then, going a step further, I looked up the last name, Isari. In Japanese, 'Isari' means 'fishing' or 'searching'. So her name is 'Belly Fishing'. I have to wonder if the author even bothered to do any research before settling on this for her heroine's name.

I'm actually curious why the author chose this ethnic background for her heroine, when the author herself is Puerto Rican. I just wonder if the character would've felt a little more authentic if the author had drawn on her own background to create her. To be clear, I'm not saying that the author isn't allowed to write characters with a different ethnic background from hers, and as a white woman I don't have any place to say whether the representation was good, but I feel like it possibly would've helped. Because this isn't good, and it needed all the help it could get.

There is another character, Kitty. Those who know the story of Pride and Prejudice know that Kitty is one of the younger Bennett sisters. In this book, she's in two scenes and serves as a plot device to get our heroine into a room where she needs to be for the story to move along. She is supposed to be Italian, which I only realized in the second scene (Chapter 11) she was in because when she's leaving she says, "Ciao" to Hara. Earlier in that scene she throws a couple other non-English words into conversation randomly. The only problem is, one isn't an Italian word and the other wasn't the correct word. Kitty is calling someone a whore and uses the word 'punta', which is Italian (and Spanish) for 'point'. A couple paragraphs later she says something about her 'familia', which is the Spanish word for 'family.' The Italian word is 'famiglia'. Then Kitty disappears never to be seen, heard from, or talked about again, so it doesn't really matter I suppose, but this feels so lazy to me.

There's another scene (Chapter 16) where Hara is reading a letter and the letter uses the word 'abeyance'. They use it as a synonym or relation to the word 'obedience'. In reality, this means almost the opposite of what the author intends. The definition of abeyance is: a state of temporary disuse or suspension. So instead of the letter saying 'we would like you to honor (obey to) our agreement', they are instead saying, 'we would like you to suspend our agreement'...

I can't actually point out a character or scene that I enjoyed in this. The romance was too little, too late. The passages from Derek Darcy's POV feel totally pointless. This whole story could've been written without them. Hara is one of the most annoying heroines I've read about in a long while. None of the side characters are anything more than caricatures. There's even a moustache-twirling villain who we're told has an obsession with phallic symbols and it's equated to being depraved and evil.

The story itself is just bad. It bums me out so much. There is a glimmer, just the faintest glimmer of an interesting story. This could've been a fun updated version of P&P, in semi-skilled hands. But aside from a few inserts of quotes from the source material, vague plot generalities, and a few character names, this has almost nothing to do with Pride & Prejudice. Then the end gets so utterly ridiculous and melodramatic that I don't even know how this whole book isn't one elaborate prank. At one point, our hero says, "Am I stuck in a bad cable movie?" And I literally face-palmed. EVEN YOUR CHARACTERS KNOW THE BOOK IS RIDICULOUS!

A couple more WTF moments:

1. We're told several times throughout the course of this book that Hara works for a small-town newspaper in a podunk town (I'll take boring cliches for a million, Alex) and that she is the ONLY full-time employee working at the paper along with her boss. Even so, her boss bought multiple plane tickets for her, ordered her a limousine, and put her up in a super swanky boutique hotel. He also bought her fancy clothes for the trip. Yeah...that sounds like real life in a podunk town.

2.

Hara's father blackmails someone he knows is potentially dangerous in order to get his daughter a job opportunity...where she will be around the person he knows is potentially dangerous at worst and a criminal at best. WHAT?

3.

Hara's friend/acquaintance Naomi learns she's pregnant and that same night Hara and Derek jump into having unprotected sex and there's never even a discussion of condoms or birth control or anything. In 2020? Really?

4. There's a lot of girl-hate in this book. The word 'ho' is thrown around liberally and girls literally fight over shitty dudes. Could we not?


I am so thankful to be given the opportunity to read this book before its release, and I wish I had enjoyed it more.

So I didn't like this as much as The One, which takes place in the same world, but I still thought it was a really well-crafted story, at least for the first 3/4 of the book.

It's fast paced and yet still manages to have moments of introspection and comment on topics like the over-reliance of technology in our society.

This is set in a near future Great Britain. Things like brexit are mentioned as having happened 'years ago', but it's vague enough to feel very current, even considering the advanced nature of things like DNA sequencing and driverless cars.

The structure of the book is also similar to The One, where we have a wide cast of character perspectives we're following revolving around one incident/circumstance. At some point, the character narratives weave together into a larger story. I found that, while it worked really well in The One, I wasn't as taken with it in this book. I think it comes down to the fact that I didn't really feel like I knew these people. We're only seeing a snapshot of their lives, flashbacks interspersed with the current action. There wasn't time to get to know any of them, and what we did get to know wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of their character. Libby is probably the only character I would say was developed beyond a surface level, and even she was difficult to connect to.

I also felt like the end was a little underwhelming. At about the 3/4 mark, we get what ends up being the big climax of the book. What we've been building toward for the last couple hundred pages finally happens. The last 1/4 of the book is the aftermath. Not that there aren't any reveals or turns in the story, but it just didn't have the same impact on me that the first part of the book did. Mostly we're just being told the truth about different situations after the fact instead of them being revealed in a more exciting way. The story itself was a good one, but it would've been nice if it hadn't all been thrown into a couple of long, expositional speeches.

Looking back through this review, it may seem like I didn't enjoy it, but I really did, despite the anticlimactic ending.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to think about this. It seems to be one that people either love or hate, so I put off reading it for quite a while.

As you can see from my rating, I fell into the ‘Love It’ camp. I loved the premise, and the way their relationship started out as friendly with them passing notes back and forth.

I liked the exploration of a mentally abusive relationship. I think too often people think of abuse and their minds immediately go to hitting/physical hurt, when in reality this kind of gaslighting abuse Tiffy experiences is very common. The way this part of the story resolves feels a bit melodramatic, but it didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment of this story.

The reason it doesn’t get a full five stars from me is that I wish there was a little more development to their relationship in the second half of the book. They go from friends to hot and bothered in the course of about two pages, and from that point on they’re pretty intense with each other.

All that said, this was a super fast read for me and I want to read more from this author in the future.

4.5 stars
This is the third book I've read from Charles Dickens, and it is definitely my favorite so far. While he's still totally on brand with the way he blathers on and on about every minute detail, I found that there was more to entertain in this book in comparison to Great Expectations.

The characters felt more real, more developed. I loved his aunt Betsy and the Peggotty's so much. I was actually surprised that I ended up loving his aunt as much as I did with the way her character was introduced, but I loved that she was in his corner and devoted to him.

Perhaps the best thing about my experience of this story was listening to the audiobook performed by Richard Armitage. It was one of the best audiobook performances I've ever heard by a single actor, and absolutely added to my enjoyment of the book. For anyone interested, I got this specific version from audible, and I believe it's an audible exclusive.

There are a couple more books from Dickens I'm interested in reading, so we'll see how it goes, but this is at the top of my list at the moment.

This book feels like it was written for someone who loves The Hunger Games, but thinks the sections with Katniss dying from starvation and dehydration are too tame.

I say that as someone who gave it three stars, so it's not as if I hated the book. But I will say that if you are at all squeamish about reading about gory injuries you may want to pass on this one, or at least be aware going into it that you are not going to be comfortable. I feel like I'm a person who isn't easily unnerved while reading, but this even had me cringing while listening.

Aside from the gore aspect, the story was okay. I enjoy survival stories, and I thought that aspect of the story was interesting. I do think that Ashley has a lot of 'not like other girls' about her which made me roll my eyes at times. Just because a girl knows how to hunt and subsist on the land doesn't mean she wouldn't know how to put on pantyhose...just saying.

I like that this book doesn't end with a magical HEA where all of her dreams come true. There are consequences to her actions and the things she has to do to survive don't go away. She grows and heals but her scars never fully go away.

This book was a super fast read. The audiobook was only 5-6 hours long, so the book must not be much more than 200 pages. That said, it's a tough 200 pages to read.

This was one of my more anticipated books this year, so 3 stars is disappointing. Part of me really wants to get super snarky with this review, but suffice it to say that while some parts were so beautiful, I didn’t feel connection to any of the characters, and there isn’t really a discernible plot. Also, I’m not a writer, but I don’t think repeating words over and over again counts as evocative imagery.

If it wasn't for a murky paranormal element that never felt fully fleshed out, this would've been a full five stars for me. There were plenty of twists and turns that I didn't see coming. I usually find that as I read a thriller I'm trying to figure out where the story is going to go. That's part of the fun of it for me. But with this book, I found that I was happy just to be along for the ride.

The concept behind this is incredibly creepy. I don't want to get too deep into it because it could be slightly spoilery, but I was thoroughly unsettled learning about 'The Other People'. The way this story unfolded and gave little bits of information here and there leading up to the big reveals felt very satisfying.

Like most thrillers, the characters in this book are flawed and messy and morally grey, but I still found myself wanting things to turn out well for them, because it was obvious that (for the most part) they weren't bad people.

As I said at the top, the only thing that keeps this from being a five-star read is the addition of a paranormal subplot that felt like an afterthought to me. It was never really developed and felt like a plot contrivance to push the characters where the author needed them to be. I also felt like the ending wasn't quite realistic aside from the paranormal aspect

we're supposed to believe these awful people have been chasing Izzy for years to kill her in order to satisfy the terms of Miriam's 'favor', and then at the end they just...give up? Maybe when Miriam died they considered everything settled, but it seemed like something that could've used some clarification.

I really want to read The Chalk Man next. I've heard so many positive things about that book, and if this book is any indication, I think I'm going to really enjoy it as well.

I classify this book as non-fiction, even though the author does quite a bit of supposition throughout this book. The assumptions she makes are logical leaps based on the realities of Victorian-era society.

As someone who is fascinated by true crime shows and stories and also loves history, this book is right in my wheelhouse. I have, of course, heard the story of Jack the Ripper. But before reading this book, I couldn't have told you a thing about any of the women who were murdered by him, other than the fact that they made their living on the streets as prostitutes.

This books delves in to the lives of these women, exploring their upbringing, education, living circumstances, etc. It shows us how decisions made by others, usually men, influenced the resources these women had, and how society in that time gave women next to no recourse in the instance of abusive or unhappy relationships.

I found learning about the ins and outs of Victorian life for fascinating, but if that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, you might not enjoy this. I like that she dedicated one section to each of the women and reflected very little on the actual murders or the murderer. Enough time has been spent on him.

So why only 4 stars? Basically, the last section about Mary Jane Kelly is very flimsy. I understand that there really isn't a lot of information known about her that is provable, but it felt like the author took too heavy a hand in this section exploring the possibilities rather than sticking to actual verifiable facts. The story of her being forced into human trafficking is interesting, but I don't know how true it is.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is how sex workers are characterized throughout the book. As I said before, one of the only things that is 'known' about these women is that they were all sex workers killed while they were out at night searching for clients. This author's thesis is that there is zero hard evidence that three of the five women ever sold sex for money, and that characterizing them as such has made it easier for history to forget about them and kind of brush them aside because of their profession.

Now, this may be true. They may have just been one of many homeless people forced to sleep on the streets and beg for their living, but I'm not sure why that really matters? What if they were all prostitutes? Would that mean they deserved to be killed or that we shouldn't care as much about their lives? That seems to be what some reviewers took from the book. And I can understand why, with the strong assertions from the author that almost seem to insert a division between these women and sex workers. I don't think, however, that her goal was to say that these women were 'better' than prostitutes. I think her goal was merely to frame them in a way that would make the reader reassess their own bias and preconceptions from over a century of mis-characterization. Not just for three of the five women, but for all of them.

All in all, I really appreciated this book for shedding some light on these women and the role that society played in their circumstances and lack of opportunities.

Content Warning:

grooming, molestation

I have found that as much as I enjoy the banter and overall humor of Tessa Dare’s writing (specifically her dialogue), there is just something lacking in the execution of her stories for me. This was a solid 3-star book most of the way through, but about 80% of the way through the book there is a reveal that came essentially out of nowhere that seemed wholly out of place.

we learn that Penny was groomed and molested as a child by a family friend.

There is almost no foreshadowing leading up to finding out about this secret, and it really doesn’t have bearing on the relationship between our two protagonists.
This was just ok for me. I don’t really have much more to say about it. I am excited about the next installment of this series, but this wasn’t my favorite.