#stud like her

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Chance Cooper- Stud Like Her, by Fiona Zedde

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Voting ended onFeb 28, 2025

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Stud Like Her by Fiona Zedde Chance was in love once, but it wasn’t with the girlfriend she stayed with for far too long. The same girlfriend who dropped Chance when she became too inconvenient. To bury her disappointment, Chance tries to return to the woman she loved when she was afraid to be herself: A stud attracted to other studs. View the full summary and rep info on wordpress!

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: 2022 Queer Black Romances

Fave Five: 2022 Queer Black Romances

D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding by Chencia C. Higgins (F/F) I’m So (Not) Over You by Kosoko Jackson (M/M) Stud Like Her by Fiona Zedde (F/F) Crimes of Passion by Jack Harbon (M/M) If You Love Something by Jayce Ellis* (M/M) *Yes this technically came out in 2021, but it was December 28th, so we’re gonna let it slide Bonus: These are all adult, but for YA, check out The Kindred by Alechia Dow…

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Stud Like Her by Fiona Zedde

This is a romance novel following Chance, a stud who is attracted to other studs but deathly afraid of the stigma associated with such relationships. After the femme she dated for years leaves her, Chance tries to reconnect with the stud with whom she had a brief connection but was afraid to go public with. Instead, she meets Garett, a younger stud very interested in Chance, but who won't tolerate their relationship being a secret, so Chance must learn to confront her fear if she wants to be with her.

I didn't love this one. I had several different issues with it, starting with the fact that it needed a few more rounds of editing. The same information was delivered repeatedly as though it were new, some conversations were disjointed and difficult to follow, and on more than one occasion, entire words were left out of sentences.

I also had a few issues with it politically. Chance works as a grant writer at a charity that provides housing for queer women over fifty, which would have been fine if the description had been left at queer women. But the book repeatedly lists out lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, and queer women, and the fact that it on multiple occasions names several specific identities but never once mentions trans women is very suspect. Also, her parents are expats who have retired to Mexico, in part for the cheap rent. And the book never even momentarily considers the fact expats are able to do so because of American imperialism deliberately underdeveloping other economies and demanding that our citizens be met with comfort when we visit or relocate to these countries despite how horrendously we treat their citizens doing the same. I recognize that this isn't something that will bother most readers and that the intention was simply to have one's parents able to comfortably retire as part of the same fantasy wish fulfillment inherent to romance novels that lets everyone own their own homes in a housing crisis. But it did annoy me.

As is very common with romance novels, I also felt that there was far too little resolution after the third act breakup, which was only worsened by the fact that I was already rolling my eyes at how the breakup was being handled. Yes, Garett hid something huge from Chance that is definitely worth arguing about. But the fact that Chance was stewing in her misery imagining how Garett must have been smugly laughing at her the whole time was patently ridiculous when Garett had not done a single thing throughout the entirety of the novel to suggest she would ever be so cruel. I think the intention was to suggest that Chance was traumatized by how bad her previous breakup was, but that was not communicated at all.

I liked Chance and Garett as characters and seeing how Chance learned to evolve around her issues with how others see her and stop valuing people who don't value her. This is also maybe the only time I've read a variation of "character a isn't comfortable being out but character b won't be with them otherwise" where character b wasn't an unempathetic asshole about it while being framed as objectively correct, so that was nice. The thread of Chance's charity losing its funding was also compelling prior to its lackluster resolution. And representation of studs or butches dating each other is all too rare, all of which kept me from DNFing the book. But I did consider doing so repeatedly, and cannot recommend this. 2⭐️