Musings on Romance

Tag: interracial romance (Page 1 of 4)

Bet On It by Jodie Slaughter, narrated by Angel Pean

Bet On It by Jodie Slaughter, narrated by Angel Pean. Much heavier in tone than I expected.

Illustrated cover with a lilac background, showing a curvy Black woman next to a giant bingo sheet on the other side of which is a white guy. The bingo sheet is dobbed with love hearts.

 

I’m usually really good at ignoring a cover image and not falling for the “illustrated cover equals romantic comedy” trap but with Bet On It I slipped and fell in. To be fair, there is a content note right in the beginning saying that the book deals with mental illness, which I knew already from the blurb:

The first time Aja Owens encounters the man of her dreams, she’s having a panic attack in the frozen foods section of the Piggly Wiggly. The second time, he’s being introduced to her as her favorite bingo buddy’s semi-estranged grandson. From there, all it takes is one game for her to realize that he’s definitely going to be a problem. And if there’s anything she already has a surplus of, it’s problems.

In Walker Abbott’s mind, there are only two worthwhile things in Greenbelt, South Carolina. The peach cobbler at his old favorite diner and his ailing grandmother. Dragging himself back after more than a decade away, he’s counting down the days until Gram heals and he can get back to his real life. Far away from the trauma inside of those city limits. Just when he thinks his plan is solid, enter Aja to shake everything up.

A hastily made bingo-based sex pact is supposed to keep this…thing between them from getting out of hand. Especially when submitting to their feelings means disrupting their carefully balanced lives. But emotions are just like bingo callers—they refuse to be ignored.

but I really wasn’t expecting the book to be as heavy in tone as it was. After all, there’s a sex pact! Those expectations affected my experience of the book. Dear AudioGals reader, if you do not have the same expectation going in, this book may well work for you much better than it did for me.

The mental health representation in the book is excellent. It’s accurate and sympathetic. And detailed. At times it felt more like a primer for how to be friends with someone with a mental illness than a romance novel. The focus on mental illness and mental health took up a lot of real estate in the novel which I also wasn’t expecting.

There is a strong focus on Aja making friends in her new town, which was incredibly important to her but it, too, took up a lot of space in the story which wasn’t time she was with Walker. I love strong female friendships, but I really love a lot of the main characters together and given a choice I’ll pick the latter most of the time. This is very much a personal preference so YMMV.

There were some laughs for me in the book (the reference to an intervention for example) but they were few and far between.

More than anything else though, it took a long time for anything to happen and there was a lot of detail about the things that did, which only served to slow the pace down. I found myself getting bored and interrupting the book to listen to other things instead. Always a bad sign.

I’ve read and listened to plenty of novels with great mental health rep which were also moving, entertaining, funny and/or otherwise very enjoyable. But Bet On It felt very dense to me (mostly because of that slowness factor) and there were too-few lighter moments to break things up. I had been hoping for lots of snappy banter; more zing and sizzle, less internal monologuing.

The sex was scorching hot though. Ms. Slaughter sure knows how to write a sex scene.

The narration was good but not good enough to get me over the hurdle of the slow pace of the story and its density. The character voices were well differentiated. I particularly liked Miss May’s characterisation.

I’m honestly not sure if Ms. Pean’s pacing was just a little slow or if it was entirely the story but either way, I found myself impatient for things to move faster.

I liked the accents used for the various characters and the differentiation given to them. I would certainly listen to Ms. Pean again.

I’d also listen or read more from Jodie Slaughter but I might do a bit more research first so that my expectations were better calibrated beforehand.

Grade: C

REVIEW: Unfit to Print by KJ Charles, narrated by Vikas Adam

sepia background with a head and neck silhouette of a Black man with short curly hair superimposed over it to look like a photo negative, sort ofWhy I read it:  One from my own TBL

Content Warning: Some depiction of prostitution for financial reasons.

What it’s about: (from Goodreads)  When crusading lawyer Vikram Pandey sets out in search of a missing youth, his investigations take him to Holywell Street, London’s most notorious address. He expects to find a disgraceful array of sordid bookshops. He doesn’t expect one of them to be run by the long-lost friend whose disappearance and presumed death he’s been mourning for thirteen years.

Gil Lawless became a Holywell Street bookseller for his own reasons, and he’s damned if he’s going to apologise or listen to moralising from anyone. Not even Vikram; not even if the once-beloved boy has grown into a man who makes his mouth water.

Now the upright lawyer and the illicit bookseller need to work together to track down the missing youth. And on the way, they may even learn if there’s more than just memory and old affection binding them together…

What worked for me (and what didn’t): It’s often easier for a novella-length story to give me a believable HEA when the main characters already know each other. In this second chance romance (is it second chance when the first chance was when they were only 15 or 16? – let’s go with it anyway, shall we?), Vikram and Gil both went to boarding school together. As the only boys of colour in their form, they shared a common bond which quickly grew into a devoted friendship, with some, er, teenage boy benefits. Vikram is the scion of a wealthy and privileged Indian family, Gil is the illegitimate son of a wealthy man and a Black housemaid. Gil was fortunate in that he was acknowledged by his father, who housed him and paid for his education. Vikram is a straight up and down type guy, Gil tends to gravitate to the gray areas and is more “street smart”  (my term); the latter used to help Vikram not be constantly beaten up at school (the white students not being happy with the idea that Vikram was at least their equal).

When Gil was 16, his father died and his half-brother Matthew booted him out with only ten pounds. He was forced to leave the school so suddenly, he wasn’t even able to tell Vikram. For the following 13 years, Vikram mourned his friend; after looking for him as best he could, he believed Gil to be dead. Continue reading

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