I really wanted to like this book but after trying to read it three separate times, I ended up DNF-ing it at 21%.
The main character, Olivia, is living my dream life. She works at a university library with her super cool friend Stevie and a supervisor who is head over heels for her. Like me, she’s writing her first serious romance novel and doing a lot of research to make her male main character perfect. To top that off, she’s living in London with her brother who is a full-time influencer which means she gets lots of free stuff from his PR packages. There were so many things that drew me to pick up this book.
The writing is where I got held up every time I returned to this book to give it another chance. The use of passive voice and the lack of sentence variance led to a monotonous tone, which evoked the feeling that Olivia is just letting life happen to her rather than being a main character in her own story. Even when Olivia is describing a steamy dream she had, there is no passion in the storytelling, almost like it’s being told from a very apathetic view.
Olivia’s obsession with Pride and Prejudice, especially Mr. Darcy, was something I found interesting the first few times, and then after that it felt really redundant and annoying. Maybe it’s because I’m not a huge classic literature fan, but the fact that Mr. Darcy was being mentioned every other page got boring and almost irritating after a while. Like we get it, you like Mr. Darcy, but I wish I got more of Olivia rather than her obsession with a man.
I wish the book showed us what was happening rather than telling us about it. There were many instances in which Olivia used an adjective to describe a person or situation without showing us the why or giving more context. It’s almost like you just have to trust her judgement with no evidence which made the book really tough to get into.
The storytelling was what really prevented me from getting into the story. Coupled with the mundane dialogue and the lacklustre pacing, I kept finding myself getting distracted while reading rather than being pulled into the plot and immersed in the story. I really hope I can come back to this book someday and enjoy it, but I’ve run out of hope for that.
Thank you to NetGalley and Boldwood Books for providing this ARC exchange for an honest review.
Two out of five stars.
Paging Kait 