Anexis Matos

Synopsis

There’s no escape for Linzie York. After the accident, her husband changed. Her life changes once more when a tragedy strikes.

Content Warning

Before reading, please look up content warnings. The ones I noticed are abuse, assault, dubious consent, and misogyny. All of this is explicit. I will briefly touch on them in this review, but I won’t be discussing them in depth. Take care of yourselves and make sure you know the content warnings before reading. There may be more that I simply didn’t catch.

Book Backstory

This semester, I’m taking a class called Foundations In Romance. This was a book assigned to me before the first class along with A Colton Encounter. I’ll let you know my reading experience in my author’s note.

Review

The writing is good in some ways and terrible in others. One of the best parts of this book is the prose. It’s accessible and, if we’re only considering the prose, very easy to read. If we’re considering everything else, it’s a nightmare. For me, anyway.

The pacing is good. It’s not too fast or too slow. The story develops well. I think I would have enjoyed this pacing so much more in another book.

The themes suffer in this book. They’re not explored or given any time to breathe. The abusive relationship is used to make one man look better than the other. The assault was portrayed as a good thing. Misogyny is used to infantilize the main character. The dubious consent is not taken seriously.

The characters are established, but not developed. They don’t even go through an arc. They’re pieces for the author to move around as the plot requires. I despise when authors do this to their characters. They don’t feel real.

This is categorized as a romance. Note that I didn’t specify this in the synopsis. This is because the description is deceptive. There’s no romance, even though we’re told the characters fall in love. There is no build up to the supposed romance.

The one thing this book did right was the plot twist at the end. I did not see that coming. Credit to the author.

If you’ve watched a soap opera, you’ve read this book. The only difference is that soap operas are more interesting. The classic spanish ones I’ve watched have better characters and a great plot. The romances are also believable.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a terrible story. It’s a horrible excuse of a romance. I rated it 2 stars. The prose and the plot twist were the only things that saved this book.

Author’s Note

Hey, everyone! Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed today’s review.

If this wasn’t a book for class, I would have stopped reading before the first chapter ended. Reading this broke me. It was an act of punishment. I screamed and complained so much. There were moments when I wanted to cry, but, somehow, it didn’t happen.

When I finished this book, I wrote to my professor, telling them that content warnings would have been appreciated. In class, they explained that this was the way romances were written before. They would not have been published otherwise. They also mentioned that the conversations about misogyny, toxic masculinity, and everything else were not common. That we can’t look at this book the same way we do books today.

I both agree and disagree with this statement. Yes, we should be aware of the time that this was written. It may influence the author. In certain genres, there are also certain things we need to keep in mind when it comes to the world. However, we’re reading it today, not back then. As a reader, I will be judging with the sensibility I have in 2022. I think it’s important to keep both in mind when reviewing older media and decide how you want to judge it. We interpret things differently and, although this is a very good example of how far romance has come, it doesn’t change the problems it has.

I didn’t receive any content warnings before I read this book. Unfortunately for me, there was no audiobook, so I was stuck reading it in Braille. When physically reading, I’m more immersed in the book which is why everything feels like it’s happening at a very close proximity. A lot of my reactions were definitely because I was physically reading this book. I was triggered a lot by the aspects of misogyny, infantilization, and gender roles of this story. Infantilization and gender roles were the worse part about reading because I know how much they’ve affected me in my life.

I no longer identify as a woman. However, I’m feminin presenting. There are people who don’t know I don’t identify as a woman, so they believe I am. For that reason, to my unfortunate dismay, they have expectations that are specifically because of my gender. I constantly have to argue about what they expect and what I want. I don’t need a book reminding me of that. I don’t read to be reminded of how fucking challenging my everyday life is.

I’m so annoyed I had to read this whole book. I’ve read problematic books which I enjoy, but this was too much. I will never visit this story again.

On a happier note, my in-depth review of this book will come out next year. If you want to be the first to be notified, subscribe to my channel.