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| Book Cover from Amazon.com |
Opinion
Hello my dear readers, I come to you again with a review and this time I get to review what I think is one of the more interesting takes on a romance novel that I ever have encountered. Now, as you may recall, I haven’t read romance much in the last several years. I was given an opportunity to read another one, and Wowza is the best word for it. Daisy came to me and asked me for the review, and thankfully it was on Kindle Unlimited. Now, Amazon is not paying me for my Kindle Unlimited subscription but I would like to take a moment and let you all know what a lovely thing it is to read books I might not otherwise be able to afford.
With that in mind like all of my reviews, this is an honest one, and I'm going to be pointing out my opinion on what I liked, and what I did not like.
Do you like art? I do. I love poems and art that describe pain and misery sometimes, just as much as I like the happy and positive ones. However, with that in mind, how often do you read a book where aspects of the character conflict are something you find reprehensible and angry, and yet find the writing compelling enough to continue to read it?
I can honestly say that the majority of us read books we want to enjoy, and rarely read books for the art and challenge in them. Well, I’m going to challenge you guys. If you have an issue with the subjects of infidelity, or you are not comfortable with naïve people being taken advantage of, you may not like this book. However, if you are curious, and I hope you are, keep reading this review!
Most of the time with a romance novel, you find some exciting things like the changing of a character from negative to positive. There are all sorts of ways to accomplish this goal, you can have them start a hot mess and end up a saint, or you could write of some struggle they endured and show their strength.
This is the first time I’ve read a romance novel that took a sharp turn off the road and head right into a guardrail, but I want to make this part clear, Daisy did this in a good way.
We have a protagonist who starts sympathetic, and the reader wants nothing more for her to find her prince charming. Instead, we are feasting upon layer upon layer of naïve and yet insane behavior, that all culminate in a protagonist who is deep down, despicable. The phrase “Once a cheater always a cheater” I think should be tattooed on this person, and what is worse, we see someone sympathetic change to something I don’t ever want to talk to. I’ve never so quickly fallen into deep dislike morally for a protagonist in romance before, but I did so for all of the right reasons.
Moreover, when I say for all the right reasons, what I mean by that is, the Author took much time and effort to pull emotions out of me that I have never felt before. Eventually, it starts to dawn on the protagonist that she’s had a total change of who she was, both morally and mentally. This process is hard to watch, but it’s far too intriguing to turn away and put the book down. This is seriously one of the most interesting takes I’ve seen to this type of story. It has a Peter and the Wolf quality to it.
Now let’s talk about a few real criticisms regarding the writing. Many sections involve emails back and forth. For me, this drags on and on. I didn’t need to read all the emails in the chain. I’m perfectly fine with “She read his reply, and he mentioned he was coming over” type of things. I don’t need 12 or so emails in a chain to piece together that the two who are talking are into each other.
There also are some dialogue scenes between the protagonist and a best friend. Sometimes they are very good and move the plot. Other times, they are dry.
Also, if you aren’t a massive fan of cyber-sex, this may not be one of your go-to books. I don’t particularly care for it, but I did get through all the letters. That said, they made it tedious to read for me. I’m not sure how you will feel about it, so I leave that to your open mind interpretation.
Regarding grammar and spelling, the emails portion is full of issues, but if you think of it along the lines of terrible email, you should be fine. Most emails in 1996 of a personal nature were horrible and didn’t lie to yourself if you think I’m wrong about that. I know, I was there.
Outside of that, the actual structure of the book is excellent. The pacing wavered slightly, but it was still written well. The tension, however, had some spots in it that were good and was missing at other parts. I can’t personally find the tension in email correspondence written like it was. I may be odd about that, but for me, that’s where I lost the momentum.
Let me talk for a moment about what went right with this book, and why it kept my attention. First, the husband’s character is interesting, and I felt that he had one of the best arcs in this story. The Protagonist, however, was exciting and kept me wondering, only to get a very good end to the story.
I am someone who loves to watch progression in negative chains of events, and in this story, the behavior the character involved herself turns into a massive mess of things. This is probably my most favorite example of someone being trashed only to come back to a good place. What I enjoyed most about the narrative was the way the ending fell into place from this chaotic storm of a book. When I was about to question what kind of story this might be, Daisy brings the romance and finishes things with a lovely ending.
I love endings that tie up plot points and subplot points. I also want to point out this is a book set in a time before offices had spyware to scan for employee emails, so I liked that part of it as well, and I felt this fit into the narrative nicely. Everything that was presented I felt, was resolved.
Score
Scoring for this book took me some time to do. I had to consider everything soup to nuts. I also want to say that in my opinion, I wouldn't say I like this kind of romance much personally, but it’s not about my taste. What to me is the most important thing regarding this review is to fairly score it on the content of what it was, because I know for a fact someone out there will love this type of story.
So with that in mind, based entirely on numbers “Sensible” by Daisy Burton has a solid 83% which is a 4-star review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you like books that keep you on your toes, I suggest checking this one out.
Thank you for reading my review! Have a wonderful rest of your day.
- Mrs. Y
