My review of Only Friends by Lydia San Andres, a modern romance in which everything comes easy to heroine Mariel but she still thinks life is hard

 

 

I don't want to hate on Gen Z here. My kids are Gen Z and they are awesome. But: if I told AI to write a story about how Gen Z stereotypically believes life is, Only Friends by Lydia San Andres would be what it would come up with.

Heroine Mariel is proudly mediocre. She gets fired from her job for throwing a tantrum at a client. But that's okay. See, when she was in college she took a script-writing class, and now she has bumped into someone from that class who is big in Hollywood and wants her script! It is really hard to write a movie script but Mariel manages to do it, and it is fantastic, and sells immediately.

In the meantime, Mariel is making online content with hero Dashwood. They instantly become successful influencers.

Dashwood is effortlessly breathtakingly handsome. He doesn't have to work out, or watch what he eats, or use a ton of skin care products. Also, he loves romance novels. Also, for some reason he falls for Mariel, although I never understood why. (I also never understood why he was dressed as a Regency romance character when they first met.)

In order for Mariel to be able to accept Dashwood's love, she has to do a lot of work on her abandonment issues. See, her mom left when she was . . . 18? Yeah, 18. It's not like the mom didn't stay in touch while she was traveling the world. But Mariel, poor poor Mariel, never got over this abandonment of her mother raising her until she was a young adult and then taking time for herself. Until Mariel and her mom have a fifteen minute conversation that frees Mariel up to trust in the world again. That, and a one sentence text from her ex-boyfriend. Really working on yourself? Who needs it? That would be like having to really work on your movie script.

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.  

 

Modern romance Do You Take This Man by Denise Williams would have been better if heroine RJ had taken hero Lear about 200 pages earlier

 

I took a break from Do You Take This Man by Denise Williams about two thirds of the way through, because I needed to read my book club book (about the other end of a romance, when your husband of 20 years up and leaves you), and then I was traveling. When I came back to it after a week or so, I was surprised that in my absence heroine RJ and hero Lear were still in the same tedious pattern of, "He likes her but she just wants a fuck buddy, but now she likes him but he's afraid to commit, but now he's ready to commit but she just wants a fuck buddy, but now she wants to commit and he is afraid that she is afraid to commit." On and on for about 300 pages.

I liked the characters, though. I respected that RJ was a driven lawyer who was committed to her career with no apologies and yet not a Hallmark Channel villain. And I really, really liked her mentor at work. She actually mentored RJ, and at the turn where something has gone wrong with a case and I was like, oh no, the mentor is going to turn out to be really evil and blame RJ, she was actually great. RJ was taken off the case because that's what the client wanted, but everyone knew that was unreasonable, nobody shamed her, and she just got back to work on other cases. That was really good.

Lear could get pretty whiny, but he had good reason to, and he was organized and also good at his job. Okay, I love characters who are good at their jobs. Maybe I would have liked this book more if it were more about work and less about are these two ever going to get on the same page.

 Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.