5 years ago, I read Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating. My review was basically that it was fun if not technically sound, and I had no intention of reading the authors' books again (plural because it's really two people).
And then I forgot about it and moved on with my life.
Since then, I've read more romance and romantasy. Part of me wonders if I re-read that book if I would see it differently now that I'm more familiar with the genre. But with The Paradise Problem, I have a similar feeling. Good if not life-changing.
So why did I read this one? Someone recommended it, and I didn't realize it was the same author until I got a few chapters in and decided to see what else they'd done since I was enjoying it.
I'm going to tell you the premise, and we all know how it's going to end:
Straight-laced West and free-spirited Anna enter into a sham marriage to get affordable faculty housing in college, but 5 years later, they now have to attend a lavish wedding with West's family and keep the charade up so he can keep his inheritance.
That of course oversimplifies things. Maybe.
The thing with any good genre book isn't that it has to break the rules of the genre or be some super-unique thing. It comes down to execution.
What makes Emily Henry's good is that they're generally explorations into mental health, and while completely living in the romance genre, the books also thumb their nose at some of the sillier tropes along the way.
The Paradise Problem doesn't really thumb it's nose at the genre. And it goes straight into familiar tropes. There's a fake relationship that becomes real. They have to share a bed. An only child interacts with big, messy family. Poor girl meets the Riches. A free-spirited woman and a straight-laced man find a middle ground. And the leads just so happen to be the best-looking people in the whole book.
Not a single thing in this book feels unique.
But it doesn't matter because it's fun. You know how it's going to go and roughly when certain plot points should happen. And it doesn't matter. Because there's fun lines. Because there are fun moments. Because, with one exception, even characters you don't like are going to have their redeemable qualities shown (or you're going to see how they ended up the way they are).
It's Pretty Woman basically, minus the prostitution.
This isn't the first romance book I'd recommend, but if you like the genre, then this will probably be your cup of tea. But I'm still not going out of my way to read more of their books.
No comments:
Post a Comment