Verdict: Did Not Finish

Carrying on from the last post, here’s a short list of reasons I haven’t finished books recently.

An aristocrat so incompetent she can’t cut a piece of fruit (this seemed false, as she’d have had knife skills for eating complicated state dinners) and a master thief who habitually targets mansions of the rich, but didn’t know about the servants’ passages behind the walls. And was told about it by the same girl who can’t cut fruit.

The FMC “humorously” tricking the MMC into humiliating himself in public, knowing that’s his worst nightmare.  Relationship red flag, yo.

The Dead Hooker trope, in which the MMC’s heroic motivation is seeing his mother and other sex workers get violently assaulted. I’m not saying this isn’t motivating, but did you need to make me imagine a dozen women getting raped just so I’ll believe this guy’s do-good motivation?  Growing up in a London brothel in the 1860s would have been motivation enough, thanks.

Same book: anachronistic use of the word ‘pussy.’  Kids, the Internet is RIGHT THERE.  Google that shit.  I know I do.

When the characters keep noticing how hot the other person is, even while in mortal peril or the midst of the worst argument ever. This is everywhere and I hate it.

Christ, I’m a snob.

“I want you to throw me against the wall and make me regret all my life choices. Now would be fine.”

What makes me finish a book? In the main, intelligent characters with genuine agency, and if there’s sex, consent is explicitly stated in the text. Even the enemies-to-lovers, ass-slapping, fight-while-we-fuck stories need to have consent baked into the plot.

Actively agreeing to ridiculous sex is damn sexy. “I want you to throw me against the wall and make me regret all my life choices. Now would be fine.” Having had sex I regret, that I didn’t entirely plan on having, I know what I prefer.