Angry Eastern Reads

  A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR series) By Sarah J. Maas We have been on bookstagram for about 3 months now and if you are an active member of that awesome bookish community you probably have seen myriads of ACOTAR related posts: pictures of the five already written books, a lot of fan art, and even bookmarks, T-shirts and candles with the names of the main characters. There is a huge fan base of Sarah J. Maas’ books, and partly due to the hype and partly due to our own curiosity, we could no longer resist and all four of us, Emmy, Lilly, JJ and Ira, read her ACOTAR book.  The plot: The first book in the series tells a story of Feyre, a mortal 18 year old, who is trying really hard to be like Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger game series. She is a tough, skillful huntress, that is fully supporting her useless awful sisters and father. Her family used to be rich but now they are poor and Feyre has to hunt in a forest where horrible creatures live. One night Feyre kills a w...

The Bride By Julie Garwood Review by Emmy Grant "The Bride" starts strong by introducing the reader to some sound advice: pay your taxes or there will be consequences. This wisdom, however, is rapidly forgotten, as we are then taken on a journey of an insufferable Mary Sue with daddy issues, who is more out of it than some of my clients on a cocktail of street drugs. Our heroine is forced into a marriage to what appears at first glance to be an overgrown mindless baboon, who expresses his opinion that women are property and should be treated as such at every opportunity he gets.  It is, of course, quickly discovered that our baboon does have human emotions, and Ms. Mary Sue immediately wants him to love her, after knowing him for a whooping four days.  The plot then becomes a grand mash of cliches, held together by unbearable cheesiness, with not an original thought in sight. The reading experience feels like the author wrote this as some sort of a joke, or a challenge to fit...

  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall By: Anne Bron të Originally published : June 1848 Review by Ira Tate  This isn’t the usual type of romance novel yours truly would review for this particular blog. But, there is a reason for my madness! It all starts with the maxim “reformed rakes make the best husbands”. The historical romance genre seems to love this phrase so much that every other book will have the story about a shameless womanizer, gambler and libertine (who in real life would be suffering from venereal diseases and late stage liver cirrhosis) gets taken by an innocent virgin who makes him change his ways and turn him into an ideal husband.Sure, the course of true love never runs smooth and the heroes will endure struggles before they can be together but ultimately there will be a happy end, because love! And you will say, ‘Hey, Ira, romance novels are an escape - it’s not a doctrine to live your real life by, so why are you getting your panties in a twist?’ And on that I wil...

Whitney, My Love By  Judith McNaught   "Whitney My Love" by Judith McNaught is a historical romance novel that promises to take us on a journey of a young lady determined to win her childhood sweetheart's heart while being unknowingly betrothed to another.  If I did not know that the author was a woman, I would have strongly suspected it was some Incel troll from the shadiest depths of reddit. With the added disturbing element (pointed out to me by Ira Tate - thanks, Ira...) that the names of the main characters are actually the names of the author's children, the book romanticizes an abusive and dysfunctional relationship, and bounces from incredibly childish fairy-tale moments to very realistic and unsettling descriptions of feelings experienced by a woman who can only described as a victim of domestic abuse.  There is, of course, nothing wrong with writing about such issues, and this could have been, in fact, a very captivating read, but the author minimizes the ...

The Work of Art By Mimi Matthews Published: 2019 I am a self-professed historical romance novel junky. There, I confessed it! What does this have to do with the review? Nothing, other than the fact that I tend to be ‘particular’ (read anal) with the historicals I actually enjoy. Granted, historical romance stories,  unlike their contemporary counterparts,  require more work. Not just references to events, locations and technology of the time. No indeed, a good historical romance must be able to portray the time period with the social obligations and behaviours befitting of that particular time setting. As a result, I find that often authors, in trying to make their story relatable to the modern audiences, take modern day characters and transpose them into a time in which they simply couldn’t exist. Example, a willful heroine who could get away with anything that would normally compromise her and still secure the marriage proposal from the hero, who usually is a rich and powerf...

Legend By Jude Deveraux Published: 1996 The Plot A questionable fairy tale about a cooking-obsessed 30-year old heroine, who, following an impulse (most likely stress-induced) purchase is whisked away to the small town of Legend, Colorado in the romantic 1800s, where with an average life expectancy of about 37, she would have been pitied and frowned upon, as she was unmarried and childless despite essentially having one foot in the grave. She finds herself, however, treated much more favourably, often lamenting about how she wished her fuller figure was as appreciated in modern times as it was back then. This is despite the fact that she arrived at a century where the fashion was to look pale and frail, as if you were dying of tuberculosis (but that was OK, because there was a good chance you were dying of TB, delicately coughing blood into your little ornate handkerchief).  At Legend, our heroine meets a cowboy with a surprisingly 20th-century outlook on life, especially when it ...

Hello fellow readers! We are excited to commence our journey in the blogging/social media world, despite our advanced age and being out of touch with the youths' likes and preferences. So please join us on our adventure, where four bitter, disillusioned and cranky Eastern European immigrant lawyers, J.J. Steam, Ira Tate , Lily Wolf and Emmy Grant , review, rant about and sometimes admire romantic literary works which happen to be their guilty pleasure. Like greater minds than ours said before, we read it so you don't have to!  Please know that if we totally pooped on your favorite book, this should never be taken personally. It just means we did not get the same experience out of it as you. Take it as a reflection on us, if you will. W e each got our own kinks ;)