Tl;dr: If you really don't like millennials, and don't mind that only the female mc* is portrayed in a positive light, then this might work for you.
Consumed is a romance novel with some light suspense elements thrown in. That's not the issue.
Look, I'm a Gen Xer. I would rather have peanut butter on my toast than avocado. But Ms. Ward clearly either doesn't like or has an odd sense of humor about millennials. A nurse, trying to do her job, is jabbed about safe spaces. Two 20 something guys working at an indoor climb facility are " as agitated as the Instagram set could get about anything other than the inhuman atrocity of almond milk instead of soy in their matcha lattes." (The rich millennials, btw, all apparently are in favor of the infamous "wall.") There's not pages of the stuff, but what there was just...really? Is Ms. Ward unaware that millennials read romance, or does she just not care? And even if she doesn't care, why take lazy potshots at an entire generation?
Even more than that, what stuck in my craw the most was the portrayal of women. The main character, Anne, is sort of fleshed out in that she's one of four women* not painted as vapid or worse. (Two of the others are minor, minor characters, one of whom seems to be there as the bit nonwhite female, and the final minor character is the mc's mother, who, as far as I can tell, gets some semblance of humanity in time for Anne to get her hair and makeup on point (no, I'm not kidding).
I'm all for a good love story. I'm not for one that exists to feature yet another generic hard body, hard living alpha bro who falls in love with the only female character who possesses some semblance of, you know, basic humanity.
As always, I'm sure I'm in the minority, but this was not. for. me. 1/2 star for Soot, rounded up to one because I did read the whole thing, even if I cringed through ut
Consumed is a romance novel with some light suspense elements thrown in. That's not the issue.
Look, I'm a Gen Xer. I would rather have peanut butter on my toast than avocado. But Ms. Ward clearly either doesn't like or has an odd sense of humor about millennials. A nurse, trying to do her job, is jabbed about safe spaces. Two 20 something guys working at an indoor climb facility are " as agitated as the Instagram set could get about anything other than the inhuman atrocity of almond milk instead of soy in their matcha lattes." (The rich millennials, btw, all apparently are in favor of the infamous "wall.") There's not pages of the stuff, but what there was just...really? Is Ms. Ward unaware that millennials read romance, or does she just not care? And even if she doesn't care, why take lazy potshots at an entire generation?
Even more than that, what stuck in my craw the most was the portrayal of women. The main character, Anne, is sort of fleshed out in that she's one of four women* not painted as vapid or worse. (Two of the others are minor, minor characters, one of whom seems to be there as the bit nonwhite female, and the final minor character is the mc's mother, who, as far as I can tell, gets some semblance of humanity in time for Anne to get her hair and makeup on point (no, I'm not kidding).
I'm all for a good love story. I'm not for one that exists to feature yet another generic hard body, hard living alpha bro who falls in love with the only female character who possesses some semblance of, you know, basic humanity.
As always, I'm sure I'm in the minority, but this was not. for. me. 1/2 star for Soot, rounded up to one because I did read the whole thing, even if I cringed through ut