A Fan's Playground

WHY do I keep reading Alyssa Cole when her books never work for me??? Sigh. I guess it's because they just keep coming so close and hope springs eternal. I'm letting go for real this time though! (And will keep dreaming of what could have been with A Hope Divided, because that one came SO CLOSE.)

This one is a romance set in the era of the civil rights movement, between a Jewish man and a black woman. I liked both lead characters, I liked their backstory together, I liked the activism that is the focus of the action in the book.

But the way the interest between the leads was described just always felt uncomfortably awkward to read for me, which meant that any scene that was about their relationship rather than their commitment to their cause or their relationships with their families or their personal growth just didn't really work for me. (Possibly this is another "me being asexual" thing. Sexual interest between characters in some other romance novels does work for me, for a given value of "work" where I merely find it boring and unrelatable, but it's possible that the way Cole writes it just hits those notes in a different way where it's a little too obviously alien to my experience, or something? idk!).

And, more disappointingly, it felt like at a certain point in the book the story rather abruptly went from having a narrative shape to just skipping from scene to scene. The first half or so of the book felt well framed and well balanced to me. But after Sofie joins the bus rides, the rest of the book felt like a series of snapshot epilogues instead of actually telling the whole story, which was disappointing and made me feel like I never got a satisfying ending to the story and the characters. Up to that point I was thinking that maybe I'd finally found an Alyssa Cole book that I actually liked!

SIGH.

This is a romance novel of the civil war in the American South, but focused on all the different kinds of people who opposed Confederation. I think this is my fave so far of the Alyssa Cole books I've read. Still don't love everything about it, and in fact have a significant argument with one thing the book does, but....overall worth the read.

The two main characters: Marlie, a free black woman who left her black mother as a girl to live with the white half of her family in hopes of a better life, and finds herself both sheltered and stifled in her family home; and Ewan, a white Union soldier whose lack of emotional affect has led his superiors to see him as ideal for the role of torturer.

I liked Marlie a lot, and her difficult emotions about her relationship with her mother as well as her white family members, and her commitment to her work as a healer.

I liked Ewan too, but I really didn't like the decision to make him a torturer. Like. He is doing it for the good of the Union, and doesn't enjoy it, but he believes it's worth it in support of the cause, and the narrative clearly thinks his work is useful despite it being awful.

And this just plays into the same old lies that torture works. No. Torture is both ineffective and immoral! So there is never any excuse for it, no matter the situation! I am never going to be a fan of a narrative that upholds these kinds of wrongheaded ideas about torture. (Hello yes I am on this soap box again, as I am every time I read a book involving torture)

Or maybe it's just that the narrative considers Ewan a good man despite this. He is an adult person capable of making his own life choices and his own moral judgements and he is willing to do the torturing, and him experiencing negative feelings as a result of what he agreed to do doesn't actually lessen his culpability.

Almost directly after finishing this book I found myself rereading a novel-length fanfic wherein one of the romantic leads is himself a torturer. And as I was reading it, I realized that I am totally fine with the author's choices in that romance because the narrative acknowledges that the person who chooses to obey orders and use his skills to torture people for the good of his country is, like, not actually an uncomplicatedly good guy! And in A Hope Divided, Ewan.....is. Apparently. Despite the torturing.

Honestly this makes me feel kind of like the author is infantilizing Ewan a bit, as if he's not morally responsible for the choices he made to involve himself in torture, it's the fault of the people above him who told him to. Which is particularly uncomfortable in the context of Ewan being clearly written as autistic, given a general tendency amongst allistic people of discounting the agency of autistic people.

So in my opinion either A Hope Divided should have the whole torture thing removed, or Ewan's entire characterisation would need to change, for me to be wholeheartedly in favour of the book. And I like Ewan, so I'd rather the former!

Sigh. If you ignore everything about Ewan being a torturer I actually really did like this book. And you might too, depending on how easily you can put aside the torturer thing......!

C'MON ALYSSA COLE, I WANT TO LIKE YOUR BOOKS, YOU KEEP COMING SO CLOSE.

(my next Alyssa Cole is gonna be the novella Let It Shine, which I've heard good things about, so maybe that'll be the one. I want to also read Once Ghosted, Twice Shy, but the pricing for that novella ebook is absolutely outrageous if you are Canadian: $8 CAD as compared to $2 USD if you're american -- more than three times the cost, even taking into account exchange rates! -- so probably I'm not going to read that one unless my library gets it. And I've put in a request but the local library has never yet made a purchase I've recommended so I'm not holding my breath.)