It's difficult to know how to review something like this -- I don't read a lot of non-fiction, so my go to has generally just been to rate based purely on enjoyment and get more into the analysis from there. That seems...less applicable now. I wouldn't say I enjoyed reading this book, but I found it to be largely well written, mostly interesting, and, I think helpful, both with framing my own perspective of the world and in how to talk about race with other white people.

I've often found myself disagreeing with white people about their commentary on race, but not really having the specific words to voice why or how in the moment, and Eddo-Lodge addressed a lot of those examples explicitly, which was my favorite part of this book.

Unfortunately, I found the book to be a little bit repetitive and much more history-heavy than I was expecting. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race covers the black history of Britain extensively, but as someone who is not British, I found it difficult to be engaged in those passages. I have no personal context for the more recent events and an extremely limited framework for British history as a whole.

This was...bad.

I am a diehard Pride and Prejudice fan. I love the story but, unfortunately, I find Austen's writing style to be a little outside my own wheelhouse, so I often turn to retellings so I can enjoy this story that I love over and over again. This was the reason I requested this ARC. I didn't realize at the time that it was written by a reality star and I hadn't checked out the reviews beforehand, and now, I regret it. Because The Wrong Mr. Darcy is barely a P&P retelling, and as someone who was here only for that, I was very frustrated.

Lozada's interpretations of nearly every character had me pulling my hair out. She missed all of the nuance with Darcy, and by giving him a POV but missing the mark with his personality, she instead portrays him as a sexist asshole, rather than a guarded softie who can overstep the bounds on occasion. The Lizzie character - Hara - was utterly ridiculous. She mentioned her own nipples shockingly frequently and her only personality trait was apparently "beautiful but smart." She's biracial, but she's described as "exotic" and her blue eyes are discussed at length by herself and everyone around her. It's... uncomfortable.

Stay as far away from this book as you can.

Honestly, this was super run-of-the-mill. The only thing that stood out to me as different and good was the emphasis on Lina's Brazilian heritage -- I loved all of the food and traditions and Portuguese that Sosa wove into the book.

This book is really hard for me to review because my emotions about it fluctuated pretty dramatically. Sometimes I literally wanted to rip my hair out bc this book includes some miscommunication and drama that literally wouldn’t have happened if everyone just explained their point of view but of course not! Instead we have to just make assumptions and cut each other off so that nobody can explain themselves. On the flip side, though, I often felt really moved by this book, especially in the last 5-10 chapters. There were parts of Liz that I really didn’t identify with, but her story was so visceral and relatable that it didn’t really matter much.

The story was really emotional but I cannot get behind the writing style - this book would have been better with a more straightforward narrative rather than the author trying to hard to make it ~artsy~.

This book was...not what I was hoping.

The story follows high school students Emma and Sophia as they play matchmaker with their friends while each attempting to produce a short film for a competition. Despite their opposing views on love, they begin to realize that maybe the hate they felt for one another was just hiding the true feelings underneath.

There were a lot of things that irked me about this book. Characters threw around the word "love" with a level of casualness that real teenagers would never use. People who have literally just gone on their first date are not in love and no high school student would say that they are. Desombre used the phrase "my stomach bottomed out" enough times that it began to get on my nerves, and every character felt cartoonishly flat. Kate is sunshiny and nice, Matt is evil, Sophia hates love and is generally pessimistic, Emma is a hopeless romantic, Myrah is obsessed with Peter. The entire story just felt... underdeveloped.

That being said, I did enjoy a few parts of it - the process of making the movies reminded me a lot of film class in high school (especially how crappy the film ended up being) and many of the cute date scenes succeeded in being cute. But these things do not balance out the others.

There are so many other cute romcoms out there (and f/f ones to boot: I'd recommend [b:The Falling in Love Montage|53066661|The Falling in Love Montage|Ciara Smyth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1570034111l/53066661._SX50_SY75_.jpg|69421272] or [b:You Should See Me in a Crown|50160619|You Should See Me in a Crown|Leah Johnson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568912283l/50160619._SX50_SY75_.jpg|69288604] for similarish books with way more depth of character and plot)

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley

okay yall so I thought The Queen of Ieflaria was pretty good and I was planning on reading the sequel but it wasn't super high priority for me but GOD DAMN this book was so good. Orsina has strong female Witcher vibes and I loved the roving monster hunting plot this book had and Aelia was so cute and fun and the unapologetic queerness of this series is amazing and the vibes are immaculate and I cannot gush about this book enough

Onto the next book in the series!

This book marked an unexpected shift in the series -- I kind of assumed that this series was going to follow the typical romance series format where each book is about a new couple that are peripherally connected to one another, but it was really nice to come back to Adale and Esofi. I thought I was going to dislike the decrease in romance, but honestly, this story didn't feel lacking. It was a lot darker than its predecessors (about an abusive mother and how that abuse affected her daughter) but that also made it feel more grounded.