bibilly's reviews
321 reviews

this might have made it to my best of the year list if it weren't so fucking long, the type of long that makes you wish for bad things to happen to the heroine as a punishment for wasting your time pretending not to be the shallowest bitch you've ever met. i was so unimpressed with the resolution of her laughable backstory i almost forgot all the other useless mc's that came before her. and the author really wanted me to believe this one wasn't like the others bc she watched documentaries and knew how to read. where's my prince disguised as a mafia boss then? granted, hers does the job just fine (when he's not reminding us that he's falling in love bc he's never met a literate woman before, at least not a literate woman who's conveniently the hottest of the city and all its vicinity). since the story is divided in precisely two great tropes – forbidden romance in the first half and arranged marriage in the second – a fair amount of iconic scenes piles up. not plot lines, not memorable characters, just surprisingly satisfying moments and sequences, especially the ones that end with the hero killing another person for the heroine or because of her (get you a man who's ready to shoot some of his relatives to save you, even though his fiancé is your sister, bc you're all family now). in this case, burning down the establishment of someone who gropes the mc is less violence than i would want from the hero, but just bc he makes the mistake of warning the fucker. Nicolas does have a cringe nickname, tho, and it's not Nico. ofc nothing compared to the author's idea of conflict. perhaps she could've prevented the story from dragging on so much by exchanging pov's more often and not resorting to telling-not-showing during the smut (as if the lack of plot and nuance weren't enough); either way, there was no need for so many chapters under Elena's (the fact that i seldom pick up mafia books but this is already the second this year starring an unconvincing Elena). the girl made her mysterious past and life choices look so serious i was surprised when her character didn't get any development or extra backbone and started displaying a childish behavior instead. so much for reading history books at a party.

o ponto alto desse livro é quando ele acaba.

are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?

a cada releitura a adaptação de 2005 melhora em algum ponto para mim. a versão para o cinema da primeira proposta de casamento sempre foi a melhor, e quando terminei de ouvir o audiobook narrado pela Rosamund Pike tive que dar mais crédito ao final do filme e à entonação do Matthew Macfadyen. dessa vez, talvez devido ao tom conferido à personagem pela narradora, ou por se tratar do meu milésimo contato com a história, tomei um certo abuso da Lizzy do livro. e mais uma vez não curti a voz do Darcy: ele fala pouco demais pra soar tão sem graça. porém, ainda daria tudo por um diário dele: saw her again today. her eyes were as vivid as ever. they still stared at me with barely contained disgust 😔 agora, algo que me faz falta tanto no livro quanto no filme é a origem da amizade do Darcy com o Bingley; no filme ainda mais, pois acho absurda sua representação do segundo e prefiro a versão da BBC. embora eu compreenda o Darcy do cinema como propositalmente mais introvertido que orgulhoso em comparação com o da minissérie, ainda vejo muito contraste entre ele e o amigo para enxergar nas entrelinhas o motivo de tanta lealdade e tempo investido. já em minhas releituras, ainda não consegui ignorar essa questão por realmente gostar do Bingley do livro — outra lacuna que mais páginas sob o pov do Darcy preencheriam, mesmo eu reconhecendo que a imprecisão dos pensamentos de uma das partes é essencial em qualquer enemies-to-lovers.

were this a short story, it would probably be worthy 5 stars. the writing is so solid and concise that no chapter is wasted, each of them having an insane amount of details about the main characters. from the first one you can already feel like you've known them for almost as long as they've known each other. and that really takes skill, the type i would envy if i were a writer. however, since this is not a short story, some things inevitably bothered me. i wasn't quite convinced about Tommy's close friendship with his ex wife: it's never explained how their fondness for each other survived more than one decade, even though he only came to realize he's gay months prior to the start of the book. how their loveless marriage didn't make them bitter? i wouldn't care much for an answer if i was obsessed with the protagonists, but with so little conflict, their yearning soon resolved into a luckwarm affair. nevertheless, i've always loved that moment of epiphany when the full title is mentioned one single time, and it makes so much sense that it envelopes the book like a second cover. i just wish this had prevented the story from becoming boring somehow.

marriage of convenience should be aggravating but sexy. this is only aggravating.

the mc in this one can't be compared to his big puppy of a brother from the first book. it was damn annoying seeing him acting like an oblivious child. his behavior made the story even more unrealistic and prevented me from taking the romance seriously. worse: the characters' interactions were so ridiculous they kinda diminished my satisfaction with the previous title :/

this kinda slaps? the characters' backstories and side relations don't make a strong case, there's no real glimpse of their life on campus or outside an apartment and the way they meet is quite questionable, but i still had a blast? even with these flaws, the book managed to be an example of how every romance author should write imo: ignoring the external bullshit they clearly don't know how to develop without making the story boring, focusing on the couple's interactions and, most importantly, not resorting to miscommunication to create or prolong conflict. now im in love with the name Logan.

an age gap featuring a ballet dancer shouldn't be this boring, and im not feeling the connection the characters swear they have (their insta love/attraction seems forced to me).

this could and should've been gay(er). the girl simply appeared and ruined the whole enemies-to-friends-to-lovers build-up. and for what? tragedy with a miraculous ending? we could've had that without her too.