I was so, so excited to read #Starstruck by Sariah Wilson. The premise of a fan interacting with her favorite movie star on Twitter, and that interaction subsequently leading to a romance, is all of my catnips. I love private lives vs public selves stories.
Unfortunately this book suffers from underdeveloped heroine, an offensive remark about homosexuality, a very misleading message about being sexually active and a poor understanding of feminism. The book pissed me off.
Rant ahead. Gird your loins.
Here’s the premise:
Zoe Miller is a college senior and a superfan of movie-star Chase Covington (who I think was loosely based on Chris Evans). Zoe and her best friend and roommate Lexi have been fans of Chase’s for years (think middle school), and their membership into the Chase Covington fandom (dubbed the Chasers) is something they’ve bonded over. One day, Chase sends out a tweet asking his fans how they liked his latest film. Zoe replies, honestly, that it wasn’t his best work and Chase replies.
At first Zoe thinks this is just a fluke and that she’s talking to Chase’s publicist or assistant, but the tweets keep coming. He follows her. The tweets get flirty. Then Lexi manages to score them roles as extras in Chase’s latest film where Chase meets Zoe in person, and romance ensues. At first Zoe has a hard time believing Chase really has feelings for her because she ascribes to the “poor little nobody” trope popular among some contemporary heroines. Zoe doesn’t think she’s especially interesting or pretty, and when she tells Chase she intends to stay celibate until marriage she’s willing to bet he’ll run away, just like the guys she’s dated before.
But Chase has surprising depth. He’s a recovering alcoholic and a former child star. He respects Zoe’s convictions. Of course when you add his unpredictable public life to the mix, it creates drama for them, especially when his hot female-costar (read stereotyped “other woman”) makes a very public play for him.
Most of that sounds great. Most of that is Elyse-bait. Sadly the premise is the only good thing about this book.
First of all, Zoe suffers from a severe lack of character development. I finished the book and found that, aside from her love of trivia and Jeopardy, I couldn’t really tell you anything about Zoe. I couldn’t picture her in my head. She seems to exist as a cutout that the reader can insert themselves into. She’s never described physically beyond a reference to hair and eye color, and even though the book is from her point of view, most of her thoughts revolve around feeling awkward in every situation. It was very Bella Swan.
Zoe is defined almost solely by her relationships to other people. She helps her mother raise her younger sisters. She’s Lexi’s best friend and considers herself the “smart one” in a friendship with the “hot one. ” She has an internship with a foundation for oceanic preservation. My understanding of Zoe as a character felt a lot like reading her CV: I’m being told things about Zoe that should give a hint to her personality, but that personality never shows up in the text. It’s a lot of tell and no show. If forced to describe Zoe, I’d say she’s average looking and an introvert. I can’t come up with much beyond that.
Also there seems to be some Cinderella-ish implications that Zoe’s value is derived from what she does for others. She thanklessly cares for her younger siblings and supports Lexi even when Lexi isn’t that great to her. It’s a trope I’d be happy to see die, frankly. I’d like to know who Zoe is as a person, not what she can do for the people around her.
For the most part Zoe is passive: she just goes where people tell her to and does what they ask of her. She babysits. She follows Lexi to radio studios and movie sets. She goes to class. There’s almost no character development past that point. She seems almost totally devoid of personality or passion or interest. What does she do when she’s not in class? Babysitting? Following Lexi around? What (aside from Chase) makes her giddy with joy? What makes her laugh? I couldn’t answer any of these questions once I’d finished the book, and it left me feeling like Zoe was almost lifeless. She’s an insert-self-here automaton.
The other thing that bothered me was that Zoe doesn’t tell Lexi about her relationship with Chase until the very end of the book. Lexi knows Zoe is dating, but Zoe lets her believe that she’s dating a guy from her internship. And here’s the thing: Zoe knows that keeping this information from Lexi will hurt her, but she does it anyway.
Given the fact that being part of the Chase Covington fandom is a huge part of Lexi and Zoe’s friendship, keeping the information that she knows Chase personally and is dating him from Lexi feels especially cruel. Zoe justifies this by saying she wants their relationship to remain private, just theirs for awhile, but that becomes weak justification for hurting someone who is supposed to be her closest friend by sustaining that secret.
Then we get into the stuff that is at best inaccurate and at worst offensive.
First of all, this scene. Zoe has been dating Chase, but is concerned that he hasn’t kissed her yet. She turns to Lexi for advice:
I drank the milk right out of the bowl and then put my dishes in the sink. “What does it mean when the guy you’re dating hasn’t tried to kiss you yet?”
“Gay.”
“Just because that happened to you once–”
“Eleven times,” she corrected, applying the polish in short, careful strokes.
“Seriously? Eleven times? Okay, just because that’s happened to you eleven times doesn’t mean that’s what’s happening here. And maybe you should stop dating fellow theater majors.”
Wow. Woooowww. What a pile of reductive stereotyping. First of all, not all male theater majors are gay and not all gay men are into theater. And a dude might have a plethora of reasons for being uncomfortable with physical contact that have nothing to do with homosexuality.
This section is made even more baffling because Zoe has decided to remain celibate until marriage and frequently bemoans how society (especially the male part of it) judge her for it. Yet she’s doing the exact same thing here: making the same shitty (bigoted) assumptions that she despises being the victim of.
And Zoe’s explanation of her decision to remain celibate is also a hot mess of problems. Zoe can choose to remain celibate for any reason she wants; that’s her right. Unfortunately in explaining that choice she also perpetuates a lot of bad information about sex. In this scene Zoe is explaining to Chase why celibacy is important to her:
“There are a lot of reasons. At first it was religious. What my grandparents taught me. Then when I was old enough to realize how young my mom was when she had me, I decided I wanted to the be opposite of her. And then my best friend had a pregnancy scare when were sixteen. I didn’t want to be a mother at sixteen.”
“I totally get that. I didn’t want to be a mother at sixteen either.” [Chase said]
I smiled a little. “I’m not really a casual person. I realized it would never not be a big deal to me. And in additional to keeping me not pregnant, it’s also made me not diseased. My favorite teacher in high school contracted an STD without knowing it as a teen. It made her sterile, and she wanted a baby more than anything. It was so unbelievably sad.”
“It. Made. Me. Not. Diseased.”
Add to this a scene where Lexi has a pregnancy scare because she takes antibiotics while on birth control and doesn’t know it decreases the effectiveness of the pill.
While Lexi is melting down, Zoe helpfully slut shames her:
“Lexi, how many times do I have to tell you that the only one hundred percent effective form of birth control is having my social skills?”
I am a proponent of comprehensive sexual education, education that would have taught Lexi that antibiotics reduce the effectiveness of the pill (also her prescribing doctor didn’t tell her that? The pharmacist? The fucking label on the bottle of pills?).
Zoe’s reasons for remaining celibate are her own and she doesn’t need to justify them to anyone, but to suggest that having sex outside of marriage leads to pregnancy or STD infection is inaccurate. It’s analogous to saying that the only way to avoid food poisoning is to not eat food. I’m planning on having chicken enchiladas tonight but because I know how to safely prepare that chicken, the odds of me getting Salmonella are almost non-existent. Framing pregnancy and disease as the consequences of consensual sex is terribly inaccurate and shaming, to say nothing of Zoe’s condescension. Zoe slut shames her friend and her teacher, and I’m willing to bet the situations she disparages so casually could have been avoided by comprehensive sexual education and easy access to condoms.
So while I have no issue with Zoe being celibate for any reason, I do take issue with her shaming other women and suggesting that their situations were the result of having sex rather than understanding how to safely have sex.
Zoe doesn’t also acknowledge that it’s possible to have an unwanted pregnancy or get a STD while married. Marriage doesn’t necessarily mean both parties want to have children, and even in a monogamous relationship, one partner can come to the marriage with a STD they may not know they have. In Zoe’s mind, celibacy until marriage is the safeguard for all the terrible consequences she fears.
And if that wasn’t enough, we get Zoe’s take on feminism. Which is not great. In the beginning of the book she drags herself to her Women’s Studies class:
This [Women’s Studies] was a required class I had kept putting off and probably should have taken while I was an underclassman. Er, underclasswoman. But I forgot, and when I met with my counselor to go over my graduation requirements, she pointed out that I hadn’t taken it yet. Which made me the only senior in a room composed of rabid, men-hating freshmen. Freshwomen. Who would probably make women’s studies their major. Our section was small, and I often felt bad for the three guys in the class who never, ever spoke. They probably feared for their lives.
Later:
I was well aware of the fact that some second-and third-wave feminists advocated against celibacy, which I found to be highly hypocritical.
Zoe. Zoe, you haven’t done the reading.
Feminism is a complicated thing. It’s an ideology and a social movement that means different things to different people. It’s shifted and changed over time. It’s changing right now. I don’t have enough Word Press or the skills to comprehensively define it.
However, describing feminists as man-hating or rabid is pretty much planting your feet in the sand and declaring feminism bad. It’s intentionally provocative. And it’s kind of a weird thing to read in a romance novel–a genre largely written by woman for women about exercising agency in choosing a partner, and demanding that a romantic relationship be equitable and fulfilling for both parties.
My understanding of feminism is that it advocates for an environment wherein Zoe can choose not to have sex and be free from the social pressures and judgements she faces in this book. It advocates for a safe place for all women to determine individually how they choose to exercise their sexuality. Do /did some feminists advocate against celibacy? Sure. And some for it. But feminism is much larger than what “some” people think, and unfortunately, much like Zoe’s concept of the safeguarding properties of marriage and celibacy, her understanding of feminism is poorly informed.
The digs keep coming. Here Zoe and Lexi discuss Zoe’s upcoming date:
“According to my women’s studies class, I’m not supposed to get dressed up to please a man. Where’s your feminism?”
“You mean that thing that murdered romance?” [Lexi] retorted.
Who the fuck is teaching this class? The same person filling Lexi’s amoxicillin?
Zoe, you can dress however you like for whatever reason you like, and you should feel safe and empowered in that choice.
At the end of the book, when Zoe and Chase are in their black moment and have split, the people in her Women’s Studies class support her, and Zoe thinks she has a feminist awakening:
“This is feminism,” I told my professor. “A sisterhood of women who stand up for one another, support one another, and know they’re stronger together.”
Sort of. But feminism isn’t just a bunch of people making you feel better about your breakup. That’s friendship. Feminism also isn’t other women doing what Zoe thinks they should be doing (supporting her in her moment of sadness). What about supporting each person’s right to make decisions that are right for them, without shaming, judging, or rejecting them for those choices? I don’t think Zoe would be waving the banner of feminism if a classmate needed support and help with a sexual problem. She’d tell them they ought to have been celibate and awkward like her.
Honestly Zoe was so misinformed by so many things in this book, that it was almost painful to read. And if you take out the misinformation on sex and feminism, you still have a flat, offensive main character who’s a shitty friend. Overall #Starstruck was a major dud.
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“Lexi, how many times do I have to tell you that the only one hundred percent effective form of birth control is having my social skills?”
This departs from the “I have CHOSEN not to have sex” narrative and points to Zoe being involuntarily celibate because she’s socially repellent. In light of her described behavior, this is not a shocker.
Based on this review, I give this book a rating of “Burn It With Fire”.
Maybe the Dreamspinner Press anthology, “Starstruck”, will work better for you. “The Gravity Between Us” by Kristen Zimmer made for a good contemp f/f read, too – heroines have been besties for years, one goes off and becomes famous, they have Feelings for each other and have to deal with redefining their relationship while in the spotlight.
I’m not surprised at the celibacy. The Bella Swan/Ana Steele character *has* to be a shy, awkward virgin when she meets the hero.
Also, I can’t recall any of my teachers telling me about their fertility, or lack thereof, so I’m giving this the side-eye. Unless the teacher was also an Abstinence Only advocate, and was willing to use any means necessary to scare Zoe into avoiding sex. Besides, if the teacher wanted a child desperately, why not consider fostering or adoption? I think those would be better than this “unbelievably sad” outcome.
@Marian – Oh wow, yes. As someone who was a high school teacher for many years, telling students ANYTHING about your sex life is high on the list of things NOT to do. I had colleagues who mentioned getting married, or having a baby, in a general way, because they were happy about this (or because it involved them taking time off) to students who offered appropriate congratulations and good wishes. Discussing your STDs or your fertility problems with underage kids?….sounds like a very good way to end up with a child abuse allegation in your file. Never mind having something that will be shouted at you in class or scrawled on the blackboard the next time a kid gets annoyed. Boundaries are there for a reason, people.
The rest of the book sounds like a rip into tiny shreds and use as cat-litter candidate anyway.
It’s a similar premise to Elisa Lorello’s book “Adulation.” The much more emotionally mature female character in that book has a kind of online relationship with a Hollywood screenwriter. Lorello’s books are more serious than a typical romance and the characters are older. But if you are okay with a sloooww build and no sex, I recommend Adulation.
Ugh. This book would fill me with rage. Off to reread The Princess scandal as a palate cleanser.. Beatrice is a gender studies professor and secretly a sarcastic and fierce blogger about everyday misogyny. I think I need to reread it to get over Zoe’s judgy idiocy.
Suggested antidote: Cathy Yardley’s ‘One True Pairing’, featuring a TV star hero (who stars on a show very, very similar to ‘Supernatural’ so insert your favourite actor from there) and a rockabilly heroine who’s at least a lot more sex-positive than this one.
I remember being similarly outraged when Jean-Marie le Pen recommended people take birth control in hand, as it were. Including singles. Could’ve spared us that epiphany.
Sure, I’m glad when the regressives stop spreading misinformation and calling it “self-abuse”, but nobody and nothing needs advocates like a hate-wallowing walrus.
Except Chris Evans. That would be very fitting after he made himself the face of anti-gifted discrimination and myths. Love it. It’s almost as good as Jamie Dorman (?) playing Grey then a stalker serial killer. Bring on the Chris Evans clones partnered with regressive ‘heroines’.
But whoa, stop stereotyping the awkward, the abstinent, etc.
And maybe us zeddies. Maybe “Zoe” is a red flag choice of name here. The anti-choice people do call themselves “pro-life”, after all. Life = Zoe.
How frustrating!
Just a few months ago I had to explain to a friend that she could be a stay at home mom and a feminist. She had been so misinformed that she thought you cannot be a feminist if you choose to be a homemaker. I told her, having the CHOICE is the point of feminism. If you support the right of every woman to make the choice for herself, you’re a feminist.
My kudos for finishing the book. I would have rage-quit.
I just want to say I’ve taken that Women Studies class with that teacher. Granted, it was 20 years ago and at an arts college, and I’d like to think feminism has evolved but that teacher was so pro-women it felt like an entire semester of man-bashing. All while wearing gypsy skirts and hemp jewelry. Not even kidding. She was every stereotype you could think of. I hated everything about that class, but it was required for freshmen and freshwomen. And yes. That’s how she referred to us.
Ugh. Now I need to go read something i love so I can bury the memory of that class deep down in my memories where it belongs.
Sounds like a self-insert fantasy. I guess most fangirls have an occasional daydream about “What if I met X and they totally fell in love with me?” but this looks like a book to lay down and avoid.
It’s interesting how many tone-deaf books have been reviewed here over the past couple of weeks. I’m old and cranky and occasionally will find myself clinging to the beliefs that were prevalent when I was growing up, so I’m very grateful for the conversation in this community that forces me to think about them.
I’m a former Mormon, Sariah is a Mormon name, and this description screamed Mormon romance to me. Sure enough, the author’s website mentions she’s a BYU alum. So the anti-feminist and slut-shaming components are explained, and the teacher thing, too: it was a Sunday School teacher warning her impressionable young charges about the risks of Impurity.
I’ve gotten to the point that I DNF any contemporary romance with a heroine who has committed to abstinence before marriage. There’s nothing wrong with making that decision personally, but people who *write books* about the importance of premarital celibacy tend to have attitudes and beliefs about women’s roles that I find objectionable.
As someone who was celibate (cuz of a lot of self-esteem issues growing up) for far, far longer (and I mean farrrrrr) than people around me, Zoe would have been someone I avoided like a plague for her eye-rolling, holier than thou views on abstinence. You can be celibate and not be a complete sexual ninny.
There is also the option of having sex with other women, if she was so worried about teen pregnancy 😛
As someone who has chosen abstinence (for a number of reasons, which have changed over the years in similar ways to Zoe’s and admittedly have not always been healthy), I can say that I’m not surprised at the package of attitudes presented in the story, according to this review.
I’ve been in the position of “girl from conservative/religious background goes to college and learns that lots of people are actually chill with being sexually active and is totally not ready for that revelation.”
When that happened, I fluctuated around for years in resentment of ideologies that supported the sexual freedom viewpoint, because they startled me and made me feel like I was being silly or unrealistic, instead of doing what I thought that I was supposed to be doing (which also happened to feel right for me on a personal level).
Since that time in my life I’ve become more comfortable with different viewpoints, including my own and other people’s sexual freedoms, and I hope that women in that position also become more comfortable with it, but I can see where the author was coming from. She might be in that stage of wrestling with different views and wanted to give an option for the girls/women like her, who, opposite to those who DNF abstinence romances, are prone to DNF-ing romances on the sexier side.
Yep, I definitely prefer the Zoe on Firefly.
Thanks for taking one for the team here. Very well-written view on what looks to be a pretty poorly-written book. When you mentioned Bella Swann I got nauseous. And I just want to say that someone can be celibate without being a butt-hole about it.
@Starling- I totally thought the same thing as someone raised in fundamentalism. This sounds like soooo many girls and women I know when they talk about the potential dangers of sex.
It makes me sad that there’s not more representation of deliberate celibacy in contemporary romance. It’s a valid/healthy choice for some people, but it’s always depicted as 1) a result of a traumatic upbringing, 2) a result of someone being very pious, or 3) a result of the person’s hideousness or social issues. I’d love to see romance grow in its feminist sensibilities in this trope
@Jill–I think the issue isn’t that the author presented celibacy as a positive option or that she wrote a book without sex, but rather that she made the issue of celibacy and sex a right-versus-wrong moral binary. The idea of your sexual choices defining your worth a person is where I toss a book aside and discourage others from reading it. The virginal heroine being presented as “better” than her sexually active peers, and therefore more deserving of love or attention or affection, is an actively damaging theme for any woman who might be reading this and pondering her own sexual autonomy.
So write a book with a celibate heroine who receives wonderful love from an amazing man–great! Write a book about a woman who has sex with a hundred different partners and still lives a happy and fulfilled life. Just don’t assign a “good” and a “bad” value to your own sexual choices or those of other women, because that is some boring, reductive bullshit.’
Oh, and leave poor Chris Evans out of this mess. His dad is my dentist (true story) and Chris is a lovely person. He deserves better than comparison to a guy who would cheer on a girl who shit-talked other women’s sexual mores.
Did she at least fail that Women’s Studies class?
When you mentioned the insert-self-here thing, I immediately thought Twilight, then you mentioned Bella Swan. Yep. Spot on. It’s like there was no intention to tell a story, but only to indulge. It’s both self-indulgent and pandering, I guess.
Also, when it comes to stories with the celibate/virgin heroines (outside Historical romances), I often get this intense feeling of dread when I start reading that I’ve taken to avoiding contemporaries with that character type altogether. It’s just… well, it always becomes such a big deal and the focal point in the story, almost always unnecessarily, and becomes the defining aspect of the heroine’s morality and worthiness.
Wow! I’m glad I didn’t read this book. It would have pissed me off too. I hate that so many authors seem to cater to that virginal, naive, and often, closed-minded type. While I believe in staying true to a character, I think your heroine needs to be likable, and it doesn’t sound like she fits the bill.
Feminism comes in many colors, sizes, and ideologies and it annoys me when someone insists there is one flavor. There are pro-life feminists and there are stay-at-home mom feminists and there are male feminists and, yes, there are those rabid man-hating feminists but I think most feminists simply want a choice in life and career.
After reading Elyse’s review of a book I know I wouldn’t pick up to read and the comments, I wonder how Lexi and Zoe had remained “best friends” despite their ideologies, no matter their shared love for Chase-the-movie-star. Fiction magic. Also, despite working in technology, I have never understood the charm nor necessity of Twitter and I’m sure my blood pressure is healthier because I don’t indulge.
As someone who is celibate for his own reasons, I would *love* to see romances involving characters who are *happily* celibate, and that their celibacy isn’t made into a major plot point.
@LauraL: I quit Twitter a couple of months ago, and I sleep better at night. It’s inspired me to disengage from all things that are more stress than joy.
No character development, to Bella Swan, no problem. I was totally down to read it anyway because I like fandom and I like Cinderella bull crap even if it’s poorly written and underdeveloped.
But then you went into the anti-feminism and I just can’t. With. That. Thanks for warning me away specifically.
@Varian Indeed. I personally would love to see more romances with asexual characters.
@MeowingQuim. Me too. Cinderella fandom nonsense with cardboard cut outs? All goooddddd. Anti-Feminism Not like other women…nooooo.
Its still on preorder here in Oz so I cancelled mine.
I think people should be comfortable not having sex if they don’t want to but I also hate when people use awful arguments for why they do something. Being celibate because you don’t want to have sex right now is fine, being celibate because you don’t understand contraception and safe sex is actually kind of not fine. Being uninformed and scared by your misinformation is a bad reason to do or not do something.
Of note, I’ve had one unplanned pregnancy. I was married at the time.
@Rose
I do not particularly care about Evans’ (the Evanses’) surface personality in (semi-)private life. What I am questioning is his professional decision to act as the mouthpiece for, and put Captain America’s live-action face to, views like, ‘[if you teach gifted kids at ability level, not age level], you get congressmen’ – with ‘congressmen’ being code for ‘narcissistic personality disorder’.
Heinous much?
The people I would peg as budding sociopaths in my school life would be the (normie) ringleaders of the slut-shaming campaign, the one that broke into open warfare at middle school camp. Said campaign had a mass following like a political campaign…appropriately since it was essentially the gender-segregated “top” girls seeking to oust a rival with many males in her circle.
I had long held onto the usual progressive hopes for my generation, for solidarity, that we would improve the world, etc. I was stripped of them, and faced adolescence with weary resignation, depressed that I would probably have to be forever rebelling against my own peer group.
That was strong motivation to transfer. Still doesn’t put my gifted class – nowhere near as sex-segregated socially, despite all the Catholic girls’ school alumni – up there with the earlier cross-age class (created due to numbers issues) among options I’d recommend in similar cases…but all of that does all add up to make Chris Evans the face of anti-Miss Honey to me. With more bull and less trunch than Trunchbull, Honey’s opposite in “Matilda”.
Is it me or is “Zoe Miller” the most generic romance protagonist name in history?
So Mara inspired me to think up a character who doesn’t have sex before marriage, but for a reason other than the ones Mara listed. I believe she feels like having sex with someone would be a big commitment, and she isn’t that serious about someone unless she’s serious enough to marry them, and it just feels right to her to go through the ritual of declaring commitment beforehand. She isn’t cautious because of having been hurt; she’s merely the opposite of impulsive, and not easily influenced to move any faster than she wants to move. And she hasn’t got a pious background. (I’m imagining her with a mother who’s rather more light in her approach to life, and who privately wonders how she managed to raise such an earnest daughter…) I think I could adore this character.
The TV show Jane the Virgin (if you’re not watching, you should give it a try) threads that needle pretty well.
While some characters are slut-shaming (even Jane, occasionally), the show isn’t. It does that by calling those characters out for that attitude and showing a wide array of women making choices w.r.t. their sexuality.
@Vasha I could definitely get behind that character.
Eesh. Not every act of unprotected sex will leave you with cervical cancer. If you end up with cervical cancer you can still adopt! The gross undertone of “if you’re good and virginal you’ll be rewarded by banging your movie star crush!” is super creepy and, as noted above, very Twilight-esque and even slightly rapey.
Slightly o/t, but I read a lot of Jackie Ashenden books and quite a few of her heroines are virgins at the beginning of the books. There’s always a fairly plausible reason for the heroine still being a virgin into her mid- or even late-twenties and, iirc, it never has anything to do with ill-informed notions of sex, disease, and purity. There IS almost always a family dysfunction (in both the hero’s and the heroine’s backgrounds), but it has nothing to do with sex-negativity. Also, in none of her books is the state of virginity presented as something to be particularly admired or denigrated—it’s just the current state of affairs and just one of many facts about the heroine’s life.
This is nitpicky, but if Women’s Studies is a *required* class, how is it that every woman in it is a man-hater? If it’s required, shouldn’t there be a broad cross-section of people taking it? I mean, it wouldn’t be difficult to shove her into a class she wasn’t that interested in for a million reasons — scheduling difficulties, her preferred class was cancelled last minute and she had to find something that wasn’t full, whatever. Why pick the one reason that renders the make-up of the class implausible?
In Penny Reid’s Beard (Beard in MInd, Beard Science, Grin and Beard It and Truth or Beard) series, several of the brothers (the heroes of the various books) go through periods (years) of celibacy by choice (rather than circumstance). This is not usually due to trauma or religious reasons. I really liked this series because of the relationship between the siblings (several brothers and a sister) which changes/evolves throughout the series as well as the individual romances. I also thought it was rare in romance to have men who choose celibacy for a period of their lives.
@Jacq – Yeah, I wondered about the “required Women’s Studies” class too. Most colleges have enough trouble scheduling first years for Composition 101 (or its equivalent). I’ve never heard of a required social sciences course, though I suppose they must exist. I suppose it fulfills the liberal-indoctrination-by-politically-correct-snowflakes requirement that people who’ve never been to universities assume must be at least four or five three credit courses at those evil secular schools. (I’d sort of like to read the course catalogue descriptions that their fevered imaginations have cooked up: “Women’s Studies: How to hate men and be promiscuous with them at the same time in 10 easy lessons.” “US History: Malicious lies about how white people are not incredibly awesome.” “Shakespeare in Performance: How to defile a holy classic by putting in all kinds of dirty sex and violence that holy classics totally didn’t have in the original.” Anybody in the hard sciences want to contribute a few??? It’s fun.) Though someone mentioned the author is a BYU alumna, and that is allegedly a real university (with academic accreditation). Maybe they have special courses for female students about embracing their femininity or something, and assume that secular schools have the diabolic inverted equivalent?
if Women’s Studies is a *required* class, how is it that every woman in it is a man-hater?
And why are there only three guys in the class? Are there other sections that are all male except three silent and terrified women–seriously, I would not want to be in those sections–or did the college only go coed the week before last, so the student body remains 80% female?
Gotta confess, though: I’m having a bit of glee imagining a college where, say, Black Studies was required, and then picturing a class that randomly ended up with only three white students in it. Now you see what it feels like, don’t you.
<Boring Old Poop mode>
Am I the only person irritated by the inherent tautology of “celibacy before marriage”?
</BOPm>
Oh, good. I wasn’t the only one scratching my head at the make-up of the Women’s Studies class. I’m curious as to what Zoe’s degree is in, though, for this to be a required class. Yes, there are certain classes that all students are required to take, but Women’s Studies sounds like it would fall under a social/behavioral science category. Presumably, you could also take sociology or something to fulfill the requirement.
The author describes the class as if it’s an elective, but she then, forces her heroine to take it. I think this would honestly work better if one of her classes was cancelled due to low enrollment, and Zoe had to scramble last minute to get a replacement class and save her financial aid. I mean, she would be way more sympathetic if she’d also been getting the run-around from financial aid.