I’m on the side that found it a compelling and, yes, funny book that nevertheless handles difficult subject with nuance and tact. This is the sort of book that will likely split opinions. After all, it’s still a decent book: the writing is generally good and the pacing is snappy enough that even I-romance cynic that I am-got through it pretty quickly. It’s still a romance, so it probably still wouldn’t be for me, but I definitely would have found a passionate readership. I just wish an editor or a sensitivity reader or someone had pushed Katherine Center to revisit some uncomfortable passages because without them this would be a pretty good book. It’s just a lot of sexism for a novel that largely seems to be about feminism and the difficulty of being a woman in a man’s world. It’s very sad, because Things You Save in a Fire does have some decent moments regarding feminism early on but as the story gets more and more romancey she lost these things and the same actions that she’d protested against as sexist later become romantic when done by the handsome coworker she’s lusting after.

Girlyness and weakness are seen as synonyms, and that’s not something I’m into, particularly when a book presents itself as proudly feminist. There’s a lot of sexist not-like-other-girls nonsense in this book, and a lot of the narrative unfortunately reinforces the idea that men are intrinsically stronger/better than women. It is just as romancey as I feared it would be, with a host of other problems I didn’t expect. But! I met the author and she was really sweet and excited about her books and I really wanted to support her and read one so I picked the one that sounded the least Texasy and the least romancey and gave it a shot. To be totally honest, I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to like this book before I started it.

Malibu rising barnes and noble