I am about to say something that might imply I didn't enjoy Delilah Green Doesn’t Care, so I want to preface it by saying that it's a witty and sexy novel that's a lot of fun. However, there is an epidemic of characters letting out breaths they didn't realise they were holding or taking deep breaths. Seriously, the local hospital should have been overrun with people hyperventilating or passing out!
Delilah Green left Bright Falls straight after finishing school and swore she would never return. Until her estranged stepsister, Astrid, demands that Delilah be her wedding photographer. Delilah needs the paycheck, so she can't say no. Enter Claire Sutherland, Astrid's friend, who had no time for Delilah when they were younger. The spark between them throws a spanner in the works of Delilah's plan to once again escape Bright Falls as soon as possible.
Things I liked:
• Claire is explicitly bisexual!!! Yes, that warrants multiple exclamation marks. I read another sapphic romance recently where one of the characters dates people of multiple genders, but her sexuality is never explicitly named as bisexual, pansexual or any of the other sexualities under the bi+/polysexual umbrella. Look, I know many people solely use queer to describe their sexuality, and others don't label themselves at all. For some people sexuality is fluid and how they describe themselves changes but when the bi+ characters in books, TV and film are consistently the only ones who don't do labels, it starts to feel like bisexuality or pansexuality are words to be avoided, which adds to bi+ erasure.
• The sex scenes are sexy, not cringy.
Things that didn't quite work:
• The aforementioned epidemic of breath holding.
• The constant miscommunication by almost every character wore a bit thin towards the end, but the novel was still engaging.
I'm newish to reading romance regularly – so these might not be all of the tropes – but I'd describe it as an enemies-to-lovers story with a side order of there only being one part.
Sometimes I can overlook a novel’s flaws. Sometimes I can't. There isn't any logical reason for this; it's a vibes-based decision. Here, the positives outweighed the negatives, so I'll read the rest of the Bright Falls series.
Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake is published by Piaktus Books, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group. Little, Brown Book Group is owned by Hachette UK.
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