I ADORED this book. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since I read it (ngl I’ve been tempted to reread it even though I literally read it just a couple of months ago), so allow me to tell you what it is about it that I loved so much:
– The slowburn romance: so tender and heartfelt and beautifully written it made me want to scream. And when I say slowburn I mean SLOWBURN. The novel gives its two main characters, Kadou and Evemer, the time and space to really get to know each other, and in the process allows us to see why it is that they grow to care for each other so much.
– The intricate character development: I really enjoyed reading about these characters’ journeys over the course of the novel. I also just LOVED these characters. Sweet soul Kadou, still-waters-run-deep Evemer, lives-for-the-drama Tadek–I could go on.
– The themes: this book does a stellar job at exploring themes of fealty and power, especially when it comes to close relationships. What does it mean to pledge fealty to someone? How do we understand power in personal relationships? These themes unfold organically through the characters and their dynamics and I thought they were all fascinating and expertly done.
I just found this novel to be so moving and affirming and beautifully written and I can tell you right now that I am 10000% going to be reading it again at some point in the future because I loved it that much.
I hate to say it, but Kiss Her Once For Me was a pretty average and forgettable romance for me. Nothing about it was ever egregiously bad, but it never really managed to impress in any way.
My fundamental problem with this novel is, I think, the setup of its romance. Our two main characters are Ellie and Jack, who meet as strangers on Christmas day and proceed to have a whirlwind sort-of romance in that one day. Something happens to split them up, though, and then a year later Ellie finds herself once again meeting Jack under very chaotic circumstances (Ellie is pretending to be fake-engaged to Jack’s brother to help him sort out a thing with his grandfather’s will). The basic issue here is that the romance that this entire book is predicated on has the bulk of its development happen in the course of a single day–and I just didn’t buy it. Listen, I’ve read some great romances that happen over the course of only a couple of weeks–Act Your Age, Eve Brown, A Marvellous Light–but one day? No matter how expertly done, one day is just never going to be enough to make me feel invested in your romance. And I wasn’t: Kiss Her Once For Me was the kind of romance that I read and then immediately forgot about the second I finished it. I was never that invested in the romance because the romance doesn’t give us that much to be invested in. And sure, Ellie and Jack get to know each other a bit more once they meet again a year later, but that also takes place over a very short time frame–about a week–and most of it takes for granted the fact that they already like and want to be with each other, based on that one day that they spent together a year earlier.
Aside from that, I also had some issues with the writing. Interspersed throughout the novel are these short sections written by Ellie, presented to us as excerpts from a web comic she’s written about that Christmas day that she spent with Jack. I didn’t particularly like these sections–again, the whole not-buying-the-romance-based-on-one-day thing–but the first one in particular I found extremely saccharine; it almost put me off reading the whole novel because it was literally the first chapter of the book and it was so twee. There were some writing things here and there, too, that I found annoying, mostly because they were repeated over and over again (Jack smells like freshly baked bread, WE GET IT). Also, the last section of the novel is very clumsy and almost rote in its execution: after the inevitable but no less frustrating third-act breakup, Cochrun tries to get Ellie to come to terms with the ways in which she’s failed herself and others, but it ends up feeling like a really cheesy and tired afterschool special.
Overall, this was fine, but it lacked finesse, and at no point while reading it was I really that invested in or moved by anything in it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for providing me with an eARC of this via NetGalley!
There is so much that I liked about They’re Going to Love You. For one, the prose is lovely: Meg Howrey writes beautifully and with such love about ballet and dance in general, the motifs and images she threads throughout her novel lucid and striking. I also loved the way she crafted Carlisle’s relationship with her father and his partner, James; you feel keenly how much Carlisle loves them, how desperately she wants to be closer to them, to be drawn into their family. Howrey depicts these characters with real sympathy and understanding, and this carries over more broadly to all the other characters in her novel, even the ones who may, at first glance, seem marginal or antagonistic to Carlisle. Through small, tender moments that nevertheless feel significant, she’s able to cultivate a sense of the wholeness of these characters, of the richness of their lives, even if they don’t actually get a lot of time on the page. (I’m thinking here, especially, of the way Howrey writes Carlisle’s relationship with her mother.)
“Balanchine famously said there are no mothers-in-law in ballet. Meaning, it’s not an art form suited for portraying complicated family relationships, or psychological subtleties. It’s a place to get away from them, into a purer realm.
Dance is very good on romantic love. Love is one of its best, easiest, most beautiful and wonderful expressions. The dive, the swoop, the swoon. (Dance is also excellent for anger, pride, and sorrow.)
I love better in my work than I do anywhere else.”
And yet–I just wanted more. They’re Going to Love You was, to me, a good novel that could’ve been so much better. The foundation is there–the characters, their dynamics, the writing–but it needed fleshing out. Part of why the story felt a little underdeveloped to me is the pacing: as a narrative, They’re Going to Love You moves both too slowly and too quickly. We spend a lot of time on things that we shouldn’t–especially in the beginning, where we focus on Carlisle and her work in the present timeline–and not enough time on the things that we should–namely, the dynamics between Carlisle, her father, and James. That dynamic between those three is the linchpin of the entire novel, and yet I never really felt like its heft and significance was dwelt on enough or written with enough detail.
The other thing is that it just takes too long to get to the thrust of the story: the central conflict that severs Carlisle’s ties to James and her father to such an extent that it leaves her completely estranged from them for over twenty years. Because that conflict unfolds so late into the story, the rest of the narrative is then forced to rush to get to where it needs to go. When we get to the last part of the novel, then, the present timeline where Carlisle reconnects with James and her father, who is now dying, the emotional beats just don’t hit as hard as they should. And it’s such a shame, because I really was invested–I cared about these characters and was moved by them, but I finished the novel feeling a little dazed, like I’d just watched a great movie, but at 2x speed.
In my notes on this novel, I wrote down “good bones but needs more meat”–and that’s pretty much the crux of my feelings on They’re Going to Love You.
Thanks so much to Doubelday Books for providing me with an e-ARC of this via NetGalley!
The Book Place 