Rant
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance
When I sat down to write this piece, I had no idea it would turn into a rant, but it did. My head swirled with thoughts and all of them were burning a hole in my stomach, desperate to be let loose. Release the Kraken!
I shouldn’t have read this book. It irritated me MULTIPLE TIMES. It’s irritated me so much that I can’t even bring myself to do a recap of the premise like I usually do for reviews. I just don’t want to spend more time with these people than I have to, so here’s the blurb:
Jackson Clark and Delilah Stewart have had their fair share of run-ins over the years, often ending in disaster. While Jackson thrives on routine and organization from the comfort of his radio booth, Delilah loves the spontaneity and adventure out in the field. When they’re partnered against their will to cover the snowstorm of the century, they find themselves scrambling to figure out how to work together.
Eager to be taken seriously as a journalist, Delilah offers Jackson a deal. If he can help her ace this assignment, she’ll help him rediscover his long-lost fun side. With an undiscovered chemistry burning beneath their clashes, the unlikely partnership quickly tumbles into an easy and surprising friendship.
But when other feelings start to enter the equation, can Jackson and Delilah withstand the storm? Or does what happens in the mountains, stay in the mountains?
Before I let loose all my thoughts, some context.
This is my first BK Borison book. I know her work is popular so I figured there was a decent chance that I’d enjoy it. The writing is really strong, which grabbed me and I was only 2% in when I signed up to review it for the Bitchery. This was a book that demanded to be read. Each sentence led me to the next sentence, drawing me in. The picture that was being painted was vivid and compelling.
But then at 11% something happened. The book that had been cohesive and immersive up to that point, bounced me out of the story entirely. There’s a meeting between a radio station boss and a TV station boss and their respective weather reporters.
Up to this point, Delilah has been a quirky doormat. Suddenly in this meeting she speaks up for herself, challenging her terrible boss in front of ‘outsiders’. And she challenges him consistently during the meeting.
Huh? Is she a quirky doormat or does she not give a fuck? I know people contain multitudes, but you usually don’t display those multitudes this early in a romance novel when you’re still building the characters for the reader.
Jumping ahead to the end, the lesson the quirky doormat needs to learn is to speak up for herself and demand more.
But she did that at 11%! And then, I guess, promptly forgot about it and went back to being a quirky doormat.
Delilah is also a quirky doormat, I might add, who has the single dumbest reason for wanting the job she has. Okay, maybe not the dumbest as I’ve read some terrible books in my time. She has a hostile boss who actively undermines her. At the start she has the support of precisely one colleague who doesn’t actually do much until the end.
Yet she keeps the job because her grandpa with Alzheimer’s likes seeing her smile on his favourite local TV station.
Maybe I am showing my evil underbelly here, but that is a terrible reason to stay in a job that makes you miserable.
Full disclosure, in books, quirky doormats make me rage. I can’t abide them. I can’t stomach them. And I definitely don’t want to spend my precious free time with them. Characters in need of a spine are just so annoying.
It wasn’t just the once that I was bounced out of the story:, it happened often because these two do not know how to talk to each other about their feelings. If you like books with clear communication, this one will drive you around the bend. Delilah and Jackson are the opposite of clear communicators. When they talk about their feelings, they speak in half-truths and apparent riddles. There is zero consistency in what they ask each other for. None. Zilch. I want to be friends. I want something casual. This is just temporary. I want to be your best friend. I want ???
What? What do you want? Do you know? Spoiler alert, they have a VAGUE inkling of what they MIGHT want from each other, but not on your nelly are they going to communicate that until the last possible second.
At 71% through, I very nearly gave up on reading. Why didn’t I? It is undeniably well-written. I had to know what happened next. Even if it didn’t make sense and made me grumpy. I just had to know. So I persevered.
Everything clicked into place for me when I read the author’s bio after the acknowledgements at the end. Cosy. Contemporary. COSY. No wonder this book made me go off the rails. It was a cosy contemporary! It is entirely possible that millions will love this story if cosy contemporary is their thing. Cosy novels are anathema to me. I can’t stomach the tweeness, the gentleness, the lack of bite. I know that says more about me than I’d probably want publicly known, but there you have it.
Perhaps the inconsistencies that drove me so crazy in this story were cosy characteristics that I’m just not destined to love. I don’t know. Cosy aficionados, sound off the comments.
What I can say is that if I, terrible grump, still felt compelled to finish, then someone who enjoys cosy contemporary will probably love this story. Is this my first and last BK Borison title? Absolutely. This level of irritation is not good for me.
But do I still think that this book deserves to be read by those who will appreciate it? Absolutely, yes I do.
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Cosy does not mean inconsistent characters, that’s simply poor writing IMO, and inconsistent characterisation has thrown me out of many a book cosy or not.
As a recovering quirky doormat in my real life, I think I’ll avoid this one. I’d cringe a lot.
You can be fluffy, but you need to be fluffy and actually write sensible characters /loves cozy romances.
Cozy to me, means low angst, not inconsistency and noncommunication.
Excellent review! I do love me a good rant.
I liked the first book in this radio station duology(?), but DNFed Lovelight Farms (book 1, not the series) for reasons similar to your rantings.
I totally agree with you on books heavily marketed as cozy anything; it’s not a subgenre I’m attracted to. That’s why I prefer the term Comfort Reads. In fact, I’m currently comfort rereading my favorite Dragonkin novel, and it’s definitely not cozy. I will say that it is harder to DNF a well-written book, but after three-quarters of a century, I have no qualms and no guilt about conserving my precious time.
I can’t abide quirky doormats, enemies-to-lover almost never works for me in F/M romance, and I would have thrown up my hands (in lieu of throwing the e-reader) at 11% when the “challenge hostile boss in front of outsiders” scene happened and FMC didn’t immediately get fired.
There must be 150 people trying to get into public media for every person with a job, and that boss apparently wanted this person out. Having a perfect and well-witnessed, HR-proof reason to fire her would most definitely have been acted on.
I notice that the MMC barely appears in this rant, so I’m guessing he was not particularly rantable, but also perhaps not very compelling. 🙂
I would feel the exact same way!
I finished the book last night and came back now to re-read this review, and while I can see where the comments here are coming from, my brain kept saying “yeah, but” as I read them. Because I have read and enjoyed the author’s previous books I tend to trust her, and so as I read this book I expected and found explanations of what was going on. I see this book and the characters as presented as a bit more complicated and nuanced than this (and more complicated and nuanced than is general in contemporary romance).
For example, the MMC has more than one reason
for wanting to keep her job–she’s also a huge weather nerd, and being there doing that is a dream she’s had since childhood. Also, her boss may have wanted her out, but she was also very popular and he didn’t want the negativity of firing her turned on him since he was still riding on his own ancient popularity. His plan was to keep undermining her so she wouldn’t be so popular anymore.
I loved the blood and found family aspects of this a lot and how the MMC’s friends did show up for her at the crucial point. I also liked the progression of the romance–that felt very realistic to me given the characters.
Anyway, and I do recommend it if you enjoy slightly more gentle romances. I personally wouldn’t call this cozy, but agree that it’s not very biting. For me it didn’t stretch credulity any more than hundred of other contemporary romances I’ve read and less than most of them.
This is a B+ book for me.