Leg 15: BREAKING: MATHEW BARZAL QUITS HOCKEY TO PURSUE HIS TRUE PASSION, BEING HOT IN PUBLIC
cassidy now owns a chirping bird clock fml
Good morning, beautiful friends!
I so hope that last week went well for you, and that this week is even better. My (Isabella’s) laptop crashed after I wrote the intro for this leg and now that’s lost to the universe. Imagine beautiful and captivating prose that would have enchanted you and made you laugh.
Last week, I lost it a little. I came down hard on Ranger. I stand by everything. That said, some of my friends have imposed a rule on me where I have to limit how many times I ask if I should drop out of grad school. For that reason, and that reason alone, I cannot pursue becoming a copyright lawyer. Fuck that book, though.
ALSO, TODAY OUR FANTASY HOCKEY LEAGUE, AS MANAGED BY CASSIDY (ISABELLA WAS GOING TO REDACT HER LAST NAME IN THE **** STYLE BUT HER LAST NAME IS VERY LONG AND I DON’T FEEL LIKE COUNTING THE STARS SO IMAGINE HER LAST NAME HERE) STARTS. ISABELLA IS SO NERVOUS THIS IS THE ONLY THING SHE CARES ABOUT SO IF YOU SENSE YET ANOTHER SHIFT IN JTPC ENERGY, THAT IS WHY.
Lastly, I considered not including the following picture of Mathew Barzal due to its somewhat graphic nature. But, I felt like I needed to include as…this changes things. Mathew Barzal started the summer off strong by being hot at that Seattle game. Then, he founds ways to be hotter. And then, this happened:
Your guess is as good as ours when it comes to what Barzal is up to. All we know is damn, he’s beautiful.
Cassidy
Okay so I struck out last week with my find (and driven both of us to insanity. I’m not sure what else you can call writing a full, fake research report), but I think this week’s book was much better. The Unlikely Heir by Jax Calder is about American Callum suddenly finding out he’s the heir to the British throne after heirs 1-10 are involved in some scandals and now can’t inherit it. Upon arriving in England, he meets and falls in love with the current Prime Minister, Oliver. Uh oh!!!
It was a bit of a slow start for this book and took me a bit to get into it but once I did, I ended up enjoying it a lot.
Isabella
Well. To start. Nothing could have been worse than last week. Yes. There are probably worse books out there but none that we can encounter. I know I went hard on that book last week, and as someone who like writes stuff to put it into the world, I try hard not to do that. That book was that bad though. Anyway, The Unlikely Heir! This book was long, and with that, made me think about it. I actually came out of this book a smarter reader.
This book is one we found on Netgalley (though it’s out now and on KU) so we basically had to read it. Isabella can’t fuck around with her Netgalley score anymore.
I liked it! I don’t regret reading it.
This book was long. Way over my preferred 250 page sweet spot for romance novels. There were a lot of facts about British politics, or just random topics that I will admit I skimmed. I know why they were included (Callum’s personality trait of reading and remembering a lot of facts), but I just was not going to read full paragraphs that did not have anything to do with the plot. I feel pretty neutral about them, like they didn’t add nor take away from the book, it just made it really long.
I think we have to acknowledge that I sent you this book going “Is this book going to be similar to Red, White and Royal Blue or does it have the unfortunate timing of being released right when the movie drops and it's now going to be compared?” Because besides the obvious American/British, Political/Royal similarities, these books are very different. The plot of The Unlikely Heir stands on its own, but we did fully go into this with that question in mind. Which I think a lot of people would end up doing.
The RWRB Effect: any gay romance novel with an American love interest and a British love interest will evoke (invoke?) RWRB. I am also pretty sure it’s effect and not affect, but if I was wrong on that, consider this my white flag. Back to my point: the RWRB effect is very real. I’ve even seen people compare romance novels that are just gay British romance novels to RWRB. That’s absolutely not what I am talking about (if that’s you, I see you, I love you, and you need to read more books). But because of the whole prince / prime minister thing, there was going to be that inherent, as least inherent for us, comparison. The books are so different though. The plot, characters, voice. And I absolutely agree with you: this book stands on its own.
I have this complicated relationship with the RWRB Effect, Beach Read Effect, etc., only because there are many good books that rival the quality of those books! And they just fall through the cracks. Publishing is wild and there are many books etc. etc. etc..
Anyway: this book was way too long and I skimmed a lot of it. That said, when it popped off, it popped off.
I’m actually glad we read this book and decided to post about it on JTPC. Because people are going to look at this cover and go “Oh it's too similar I’m not interested” but maybe now some JTPC readers will give it a chance.
WHEN IT POPPED OFF!!! The last 90 pages went absolutely wild. I did not skim any of those pages. The author fully had my attention, and definitely because I was not expecting some of what happened. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what happened, but Callum has two half siblings so as a reader you expect drama over who should get the throne. I was just shocked at who it turned out to be and how it ended up playing out.
Right. When the author left behind paragraphs about British politics and really random facts, and leaned into plot and romance, it got really good! That shift left me yearning (that’s way too strong of a word for what I’m about to say) for what the book could have been! I want this book to start 80% into where it actually starts and then follow that. I would read this book’s sequel.
One of the things this book made me think about is how there’s a difference between a long book and a slow-burn romance. This is a very long book, but it is in no way a slow burn.
Oh this is absolutely not a slow burn. There is a surprising lack of pining in a book that is about falling in love with someone you shouldn’t. Callum deals with figuring out he isn’t straight pretty quickly and with no fanfare, like this man does not stress about it at ALL. In fact all he can think about is when he can kiss Oliver (and he gets to, soon after). They spend barely anytime arguing over how they shouldn’t be together. VERY LITTLE PINING. VERY LITTLE DRAMATICS. It’s actually kind of hilarious how once they’ve decided to lean into this relationship they lean all the way (example, the dog tags).
This book is long, but these boys move fast.
This book made me think to myself: I’m not always looking for a book to change my life, sometimes I just want something to read before bed. That’s what this book was. It didn’t change my life, and I didn’t want it to. It also made me think about how I feel re: cliche romance. Some images, lines, etc., were familiar and cliche, but in this book it worked because that’s just how people act. And, after last week, dear lord was I grateful to read people who act like people. For all its quirks and cliches, this book restored my damaged psyche. I cannot stress how much Ranger damaged me. If you have Kindle Unlimited, I’d say go for it and fully expect to skim through the first 75%.
I read this book during my lunch breaks at work and it was perfect. Oliver and Callum were so normal it was great.
The only other thing I can think to mention is the age-gap between the two of them. It’s wider than I usually read in romance novels (fourteen years), but you actually don’t know it exists at all while you’re reading it. There’s no weird dynamic that you usually see with some age gap romances. This author just wanted to write a romance novel involving the prime minister and he just wasn’t going to be in his 20s.
This was the other thing that I wanted to say (see, this is what I was talking about when I said this book made me a better reader): this book made me realize that (similar to the thing with Christmas romances) that there’s a difference between an age-gap romance and a romance with an age gap. This book was the latter. It was kinda oddly, placed, really. Like it didn’t matter in the book at all? Prime minister had to be prime minister age. He’s old but not that old. 39. I am kidding! I kid!
This book was good. Not life changing. Not perfect. But good. Enjoyable. I’m happy I read it.
As always, do they stay together after the book ends?
Yes.
For sure.