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sophia_sol) wrote2019-04-06 03:41 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2019-04-06 03:41 pm
Hate to Want You, by Alisha Rai
Okay so there's been some discussion of late in the romance community, apparently, about the relative lack of representation of books written by women of colour in romance-land's major award, the RITA. And like... I have a list of only three currently-writing romance authors I read on a regular basis (Courtney Milan, Alyssa Cole, and Rose Lerner) because it's intimidating branching out since I don't yet know enough about the romance industry to be able to find authors I will enjoy, and previous attempts to read praised-in-romance-circles romance novels didn't turn out well. So I tend to operate on a "recommended by people whose taste I trust" basis rather than reviews by people I don't know. But in the wake of the latest discussions I was like.....right, I should at the very least try out some books by some of the other major names that come up regularly in conversations about romance by POC.
And this was the one and only book that fit that criteria that my library had available as an ebook so this was the lucky winner! I was kinda disappointed because contemporary romance is not really my thing, but I decided to give it a chance regardless.
And uh, it turns out you guys, Alisha Rai is very deservedly praised. This was an excellent book!
So like, there are a few ways in which this book is not really for me, primary of which is that it has a lot more focus on the sexual attraction between the two leads than I, an Extremely Asexual Person, am at all capable of grokking. And in fact it felt to me like the sexual attraction got so much focus that the non-sexual features of the leads' relationship with each other got a bit of a short shrift. I don't feel like I was shown quite enough about what they like about each other as people.
But like, other than the romance (......I KNOW. I'M SORRY.) I really loved this book!
It's a story about a whole collection of really complicated interpersonal relationships within two families and between those two families.
The two families have a difficult history with each other because of a business relationship gone sour plus various other compounding situations over the years, despite having started out being about as close with each other as two families can be.
And within the families as well, beyond the fucked-up relationship with the other family, things are complicated within them as well, some for reasons that would have existed regardless.
I was just like. Super into this. All kinds of important platonic relationships with GUARANTEED HAPPY ENDING BECAUSE ROMANCE GENRE. Amazing.
(I still want romance-novels-without-the-romance to be a genre, I just want to read about people having complicated relationships with guaranteed happy endings, without it ALWAYS having to be about romance and sex, but I am getting off topic here.)
Anyway. In the scene where the leading woman has an emotional reunitement with the grandfather of the leading man, I absolutely cried and it was amazing.
Alisha Rai does a great job of creating believable characters and families, and writing compellingly enough to make you really care about all of them, and I was really impressed and am absolutely going to go devour the rest of the books in this series because the next ones feature minor characters I really care about as the leading ladies (EVE!!! And SADIA!!!!) and I just want to read about EVERYTHING GETTING BETTER SOME MORE for these folks!
And if you are a person who understands and connects with the existence of sexual attraction then the romance in this book will probably work for you too. :P
And this was the one and only book that fit that criteria that my library had available as an ebook so this was the lucky winner! I was kinda disappointed because contemporary romance is not really my thing, but I decided to give it a chance regardless.
And uh, it turns out you guys, Alisha Rai is very deservedly praised. This was an excellent book!
So like, there are a few ways in which this book is not really for me, primary of which is that it has a lot more focus on the sexual attraction between the two leads than I, an Extremely Asexual Person, am at all capable of grokking. And in fact it felt to me like the sexual attraction got so much focus that the non-sexual features of the leads' relationship with each other got a bit of a short shrift. I don't feel like I was shown quite enough about what they like about each other as people.
But like, other than the romance (......I KNOW. I'M SORRY.) I really loved this book!
It's a story about a whole collection of really complicated interpersonal relationships within two families and between those two families.
The two families have a difficult history with each other because of a business relationship gone sour plus various other compounding situations over the years, despite having started out being about as close with each other as two families can be.
And within the families as well, beyond the fucked-up relationship with the other family, things are complicated within them as well, some for reasons that would have existed regardless.
I was just like. Super into this. All kinds of important platonic relationships with GUARANTEED HAPPY ENDING BECAUSE ROMANCE GENRE. Amazing.
(I still want romance-novels-without-the-romance to be a genre, I just want to read about people having complicated relationships with guaranteed happy endings, without it ALWAYS having to be about romance and sex, but I am getting off topic here.)
Anyway. In the scene where the leading woman has an emotional reunitement with the grandfather of the leading man, I absolutely cried and it was amazing.
Alisha Rai does a great job of creating believable characters and families, and writing compellingly enough to make you really care about all of them, and I was really impressed and am absolutely going to go devour the rest of the books in this series because the next ones feature minor characters I really care about as the leading ladies (EVE!!! And SADIA!!!!) and I just want to read about EVERYTHING GETTING BETTER SOME MORE for these folks!
And if you are a person who understands and connects with the existence of sexual attraction then the romance in this book will probably work for you too. :P
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I haven't had much time for reading in general, so I haven't dug deeply, but the guarantee of a happy ending really appeals to me. I'd only recently learned that was a specific thing about the romance genre.
Despite being ace/aro, I do enjoy a fair bit of non-sexual romance. I'm picky about it, though. I thought I'd found my subgenre when I learned about "sweet romance", but the one book of that type I've tried so far was Not For Me for other reasons.
ANYway. I'll have to keep an eye out for Alisha Rai, especially if it turns out she has any less-sex-heavy titles.
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Alisha Rai, from what I gather from her web presence, specializes in romances with "heat" which means they'll likely all be pretty heavy on the sexy vibes, sorry! Courtney Milan, one of the other romance authors I read, tends to have less sexual-focus in her books. There's always at least one explicit sex scene, which I gather is standard for any romance that's not specifically marketed as being part of the sub-genres that don't contain sex, but it's not as much of a focus for Milan as it seems to be for Rai. And Milan also does an EXCELLENT job of including lots of important platonic relationships in her characters' lives.
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Well, I'm glad you've liked what you've read of Rai, but yeah, in that case I should probably just not. Milan is the absolute best and probably the first actually-billed-as-romance writer I've followed; her sex scenes tend to be a bit siloed, so the sex-scene-skimming skills I learned from reading fanfic have served me well. I haven't gone through the Worth saga yet; the covers and descriptions didn't grab me, but I see in your tags that you've liked them, and I've loved her work otherwise so I really should get around to those soon.
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Yesss, the Worth Saga books are definitely recommended! I think it's my favourite Milan series so far! The first book in the series in particular focuses on wonderful family dynamics so there's lots of interesting emotional arcs going on beyond just the romance one.
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I want this toooooo!
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I didn't realize till you posted this how much I want this too.
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Honestly it's still relatively recently that I was able to recognize she accept that I really truly do generally prefer narratives with happy endings. There's so much cultural pressure to see such narratives as trite, with grim-dark things being praised as "realistic" but wow what a depressing view of the world.
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I'm fine with a certain percentage of bittersweet endings - i.e. Romeo and Juliet die, but their deaths brings the end to warfare between their families, thus proving that hope exists, and there is good in the universe. But the type of ending that make me feel as though the universe is out to kill everyone, with no good coming from the deaths (I'm looking at you, George R. R. Martin), feels retro to me by this point. I've been suffering through that type of ending since the 1970s. That ending doesn't read any better, now that we're facing an actual apocalypse.
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