HRCYED Prompts Fulfilled:
1. Make a Quote: Can't
2. Your Favorite HRCYED 1.0 Prompt (A-Z Challenge): I
During this challenge so far, I've thought "wow, I feel like I've been rating some of these books too kindly, how is it that I haven't had a single read that was below a 2.5 yet?"
Well, let me tell you, I found it!
I'll start off with the good, because there isn't much of it. I found the relationship of the three sisters in the book to be interesting, and the scenes dedicated to them talking about their feelings of grief over their mom passing were the parts I felt the book was strongest. I thought the set up of returning to a high school sweetheart you had abandoned to be interesting, and I was interested in knowing what had happened there, even if the reveal was drawn out a little too long.
The bad was. Almost everything else. There were very few likable characters in this book. The main character and romantic interest have next to no personality - the romantic interest especially. We hardly learn anything about him outside of his feelings for the main character - he likes surfing, he runs a small coffee chain, and he rides a motorcycle are the big key character points I can list about him. It isn't even made clear why the mother in the book thought he was such a bad match for the main character when they were teens. He's very little other than hot and sexy, and honestly the few glimpses of personality we see from him are all so vengeful or aggressive that it's unclear why our protagonist would still hold a handle for him after so long.
Apart from the mother, who ends up getting Severus Snape levels of "redemption" in the end, the other "villains" of the story are all ridiculous caricatures who seem to have come from the JK Rowling school of "if the character is an ugly person, then they are evil." The conniving cousin is described as being exceptionally fake and full od plastic surgery, the romantic interest's ex gets dished on for having obviously fake tits, and there's a minor foot fetishist character who shows up for one scene to serve as a comedic mishap that is every stereotypical middle-aged pervert thrown into one bit character who doesn't even begin to feel like a real person.
(The JKR references here are deliberate on my end - this book has multiple references to Harry Potter despite being published in 2025 and including a trans character in the story. This isn't a sin or anything, but it does at least raise an eyebrow.)
Speaking of the trans character - I can tell that the writer was trying to write a sympathetic portrayal of a trans woman, but she and her fiance were both written like they'd walked off the set of Ru Paul's Drag Race. I guess this puts her in line with the depth of the other characters, but it's still a disappointment.
The plot itself was a mess. The love interest seems to get over his issues with the main character quickly, then decide he has them again, then get over them again, then decide he has them again, in a way that feels confusing and makes him less likeable as a protagonist. Some events just happen out of nowhere - the first time the younger sister goes missing was interesting and meaningful. The second time, it turns out she got distracted helping out a turtle. What was the purpose of that? The final conflict is also SO stupid that it undercuts some of the more interesting explorations of grief that happen within the book.
There's also a few grammatical errors or just general mistakes that were left in the book, and the dialogue was unrealistic. A 25-year old woman said that something was "epic." This book was published this year.
Anyways. Didn't like this one, but it was cathartic complaining about it. (': Giving it a 2 because I really did like some of the sister stuff in here, but it is not worth picking up just for that. Please read something else.
