A Fan's Playground

A perfectly fine book but I don't like it as much as some of Alisha Rai's others.

As always, her books are romance novels that also place significant weight on the importance of other family/friend relationships in her characters' lives, which is something I love about her works. And that's definitely the case in this one! I love all the various family/friends dynamics, and I like both the lead characters.

But it all felt a little too contrived for me, I think. A certain amount of contrivance is fine, even expected, in romance. And I even really enjoy contrivance if there's a worldbuilding reason for it to make sense (eg in SGA fanfic, Ancient devices can cause contrivances all they want and I just nod my head and go, "yup, checks out"). But in this book....idk, it just felt like a lot, which made me feel more distant from the growth of the romantic relationship that I would otherwise have enjoyed reading about.

Also, the ending really didn't work for me; I don't feel like there's enough work done to show to the reader that they're actually on the same page about their relationship (and that they KNOW they're on the same page about their relationship) before they're suddenly married and heading to their HEA! So I was annoyed instead of cheering them on. I think they could be a really good couple! I Want To Believe! But you gotta GIVE me something to work with here! Sigh.

Oh well. It was still a basically enjoyable read, even if I had my frustrations with it. Even when Rai is off her game, her writing still has a baseline skill level and sense of priorities that mean she can't go TOO far off the rails for me.

Oooh dang, this is really good. I finished it nearly a week ago though, and I didn't write down my thoughts right away and I am regretting that! Let's see what I can pull out of my memory.

Featuring: A woman who created a popular dating app, and an ex-football player who once ghosted her! I loved both of the lead characters, and I really believed in both their interest in each other and in the issues that keep their relationship from being smooth sailing from the start.

I also really liked the way that major issues within both of their fields of work are integrated into the story - sexual harassment issues and the significant long-term effects of repeated concussions. Both of these issues are ones I care about deeply too and the book did a great job at its depiction of both, and I really appreciated the spotlight.

And, as I've also appreciated about past Alisha Rai novels I've read, the lead characters are each well-integrated into a larger community of people they care about, instead of existing in a vacuum with only each other. I cared a lot about all the various people in each of the leads' lives! (yes I am avoiding using any character names in this entire review, you think I can manage to hold onto names for an entire week without forgetting them??)

Basically: WHAT A GOOD. Lives up to everything I was hoping for from it, and more!

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 ( small spoiler, I guess )