Here’s the problem – this is a well-written book. The craft is there. But… I just couldn’t care about what is happening with the characters and kept having to make myself pick it back up between reading other books, which is not at all how I normally approach Romance books. There were times where the characterization felt inconsistent, in the early parts of the book I felt the need to double check how old Rosie was supposed to be. I liked it better than The Maiden and Her Monster because while I felt they shared some characterization issues, the plotting and pacing here is better.
Not in My Book is an academic rivals romance. Rosie and Aiden are set up to be diametrically opposed in every surface facet. She is a Peruvian American who has relocated from Tennessee to New York to attend an MFA at NYU. She is going part time and working her way through, and she is a Romance writer. Aiden is a literary fiction writer who is excelling, and he and Rosie verbally spar at every opportunity. To the point that their workshop professor will only let them remain in class if they team up and write a single manuscript blending their genres.
It takes a special book at this point to win me over from only a single point of view. I’ve been running into that problem more and more. In this one the snippets from the shared text are very obviously from Aiden’s POV and are thinly veiled admissions of feelings. But it just wasn’t enough for me, although it was welcome. I can see why Not in My Book is being compared to The Hating Game but while I routinely forget that it is a single POV and we don’t get Josh’s point of view I felt like we had and that is not at all how I feel about Aiden in Not in My Book.
It’s a good debut, but it’s not great for me, and that bums me out. I really hope someone else reads and loves this and tells me all the ways it hits them in the swooners.
Bingo Square: N.