Thank you PRHInternational for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!
Rival photographers are forced to collaborate on a body-positive lingerie campaign, but they might have to readjust their focus when sparks fly.
Photographer Cassie Harris loves her job—her company Buxom Boudoir makes people look beautiful and feel empowered with her modern twist on classic pinup photography. Cassie’s best friend, Dana, is about to launch her own dangerously dreamy lingerie line and wants Cassie to shoot and direct the career-changing national campaign. But company politics and Dana’s complicated pregnancy interfere, and Cassie finds herself—a proud plus size Black woman—not behind the camera but in front of it.
Though she’s never modeled herself, Cassie’s pretty sure she can handle the sheer underwear and caution tape bralettes. She’s not sure she can work so intimately with the chosen photographer, her long-time competitor in the Chicago photography scene, Reid Montgomery. Their chemistry is undeniable on set, however, and feelings can develop faster than film…
I really didn’t enjoy this one. Which is unfortunate since I REALLY wanted to love it. It’s not often I see or read books with plus size rep, and the premise sounded so good!! But I was just so let down by it. There was just such a lack of dialogue & interactions. The amount of back and forth between ANY character in this book is ridiculously low. It feels like a chunk of text of a story without actually showing the story. Like someone is telling you about the gist of it all instead of you actually witnessing it. It was frustrating. Usually dialogues are one of my favorite parts of a book, especially with romances, and here it was just severely lacking. There were multiple instances where the author avoided showing a direct line of dialogue by writing stuff along the lines of “I told her that…” it just felt unnecessary. I would have much preferred to have actual dialogue lines.
I think part of my problem about this book, was how unmemorable it felt to me. It felt like I was forgetting parts of it while reading already. It was just a really underwhelming read. It wasn’t fun enough to be considered readable, it wasn’t emotional enough or cute enough or just GOOD enough. I felt like I was just reading words instead of an actual book.
The romance really wasn’t doing it for me. Which is not a great thing in a ROMANCE book! And about Reid in particular- He’s been the person that’s been taking her jobs for years now, and partially why she hasn’t progressed in her career… and yet they start dating soooo soon? Honestly, Cassie was way too good for him. I genuinely didn’t like him at all? He was so stale and boring and not anything I like in MMC in romances… Also the fact that he was spying after her for LL? Yeah, that’s not cool. Not cool to start off a relationship like that. I didn’t think she should have forgiven him. Especially not that easily. Also, I found several of the interactions around photography quite awkward? I’m an artist myself (though not a photographer) but I just did not appreciate how *some* of the photography was written here.
The plus size rep was nice. As a plus size person myself, I really enjoy the increase in body inclusivity in books! I can’t speak much of the accuracy of the POC rep, but nonetheless it’s nice to see some more diversity included in romance books.
I wish I had more to say about this book, but I really don’t. If I had to narrow down this book to one word, it would be “meh”. It wasn’t bad or horrible, but it also wasn’t good or fun.
ShakedReads 