Elaine White's Life in Books
The Author
Elaine White is the author of multi-genre MM romance, celebrating 'love is love' and offering diversity in both genre and character within her stories.
Growing up in a small town and fighting cancer in her early teens taught her that life is short and dreams should be pursued. She lives vicariously through her independent, and often hellion characters, exploring all possibilities within the romantic universe.
The Winner of two Watty Awards – Collector's Dream (An Unpredictable Life) and Hidden Gem (Faithfully) – and an Honourable Mention in 2016's Rainbow Awards (A Royal Craving) Elaine is a self-professed geek, reading addict, and a romantic at heart.
The Reviewer
I’m an author and reader, who just can’t get away from books. I discovered the MM genre a few years ago and became addicted.
Top #50 UK reviewer on Goodreads
#1 reviewer on Divine Magazine
Family Affair
Book – Family AffairAuthor – Tricia Sol
Star rating - ★★☆☆☆
Cover – Lovely!
POV – 1st
Would I read it again – No
Genre – Holiday, LGBT, Family, Contemporary
** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **
I’ve read exactly one other book by Tricia and oddly enough my sentiments from its review are the only fitting way to describe how I felt reading this, too.
“There's also a strange sentence structure here that jars with me. I can't pinpoint what it is, but the sentences either lack some grammar tricks to help them make more sense or I'm missing something. It just doesn't read naturally, but that may also be because of the 1st person POV, which I'm not a fan of.”
With a gorgeous cover, beautiful presentation and an intriguing blurb, I had high hopes that the story, unfortunately, didn’t live up to.
First off, calling this a romance is wrong. There’s a flash of flirting (some of the subtlest I’ve seen) within the story, before a huge commitment offer is made at the end. Though that end conversation was sweet, the story and characters had no foundation to explain it, so it felt very out of the blue and unnatural.
The POV was more of a telling than showing kind, reading like an account of someone’s life rather than feeling like part of it. The search for family and discovering family secrets was a good plot arc, but it took up far too much of the story, making it drag and feel flat. There was a distant, impersonal feel to the storytelling, due to its lack of depth and warmth. There wasn’t enough to justify the ‘relationship’ at the end and it felt like they were so unattached from each other that it didn’t keep sense.
