This is going to be a challenging review to write because the emotional payoff in the end is the part I want to write about. I loved it so much. Reading While You Were Seething is like watching a volcano. You see the pressure growing, the little bursts where Daisy and Caleb reveal more of their interiors to each other. And then at 90% I’m sobbing because the cathartic eruption has happened and Charlotte Stein has given Daisy the words to say how I feel about romance books and the world. It’s so gorgeous and vulnerable.
I was trying to explain to a friend why I love the miscommunication/failure to communicate trope. She hates it, and she’s not alone. But what I love is the why and the how. Why can’t they say those things to each other? Why can’t they ask or answer the question honestly? How do they get to the point where they can communicate clearly and honestly? For me, it’s about vulnerability. I love reading about characters learning to be vulnerable with each other, because it takes bravery and strength to offer and receive vulnerability.
When While You Were Seething opens, we know that Daisy and Caleb are already antagonists. They went to college together and were in a writing program. Caleb initially comes off as a bit of a dick because Daisy is ready to fall in love with him, and then he tells her that her writing is sappy. In the present day, Caleb has torpedoed his career as a romance writer by telling the world he doesn’t believe in love and romance. Daisy is hired to fix the situation and go on a book tour with him, which he insists on being pickup truck. There are shenanigans which lead others to believe that Daisy is the woman Caleb has dedicated his novels to, and there is banter, pining, yearning, and fooling around. It becomes clear that they have each tried to make themselves smaller because the world has told them they are too much.
He seemed so strangely like someone who would understand her anyway. He cannot face his own need for another person, he cannot stand the vulnerability and humiliation of them knowing it; he longs for them to just see without him having to say, he had said, about a book she had stayed up all night with. Not because the reading list said she had to, but because she had loved it so passionately.
Remains of the Day, it was.
He understood Remains of the Day in the same way she had understood it.
I hated Remains of the Day when I read it 30 years ago. I was so frustrated that Stevens never told Miss Kenton that he loved her. But 30 years later I get why we don’t reveal the deepest parts of ourselves, especially not to the people who could hurt us the most. This is why I love romance. Because in a romance the characters eventually say the things and they are able to give and receive love. In 2026 a book celebrating imperfect people fumbling their way to a happily ever after is a treasure.
I received this as an advance reader copy from St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.
