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A review by indiekay
Queerly Beloved by Susie Dumond
3.0
Woof this is going to be a hard one to articulate a review for. I want to give the first 65% of the book 1 star, and the last 35% 4 stars. So I'm giving in 2.5 stars. Honestly I was tempted to DNF it multiple times, but I stuck through because I was really curious to see how it would end.
I found the writing style of this book incredibly boring, and it was too light on dialogue for me, but when there WAS dialogue is often ended up being incredible preachy. Some of the paragraphs are SO long and just go into way too much unnecessary detail. None of the characters are written to have any personality, especially Amy - until we get to the last third of the book, where I realised Amy has no personality on purpose, because she's such a people-pleaser she just chameleons herself into being what the characters (and the author) need her to be in any given scene.
The concept of this book is great, but I did not like the execution. The only interesting parts of the first 65% of this book were the scenes in which Amy is at a wedding, of which there are 3. Everything between weddings was completely dull, especially her romance with Charley.
If you're looking for a cute Sapphic romance book, keep looking. The romance in this book is such a let down. The characters barely spend any time together, don't talk via texts at all, and if they actually get to know each other at all it's done off-page. Charley felt like she had SO many red flags (doesn't text Amy at all after the first date, seems very secretive, rushes out of the house right after the first time they have sex and then doesn't text Amy at all after that either). Amy is always the one to contact Charley first and plan the dates. I was honestly expecting/hoping this would be one of those switcheroo romances where you think the love interest is the first person the main character meets, only to find out later than the love interest is a different, better, character (ala Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall), but unfortunately that was not the case here.
And then Amy goes and tells Charley she loves her suddenly at a New Year's party, before they've even discussed if they're girlfriends or exclusive, and I was like ???????????????? You don't even know her, you just like the idea of her!
This is why I liked the last third of the book, and why it saved the book for me. After Charley runs away from Amy's sudden love confession, Amy gets into a fight with her best friend which was honestly the emotional highlight of the story. It's also revealed in this part that Charley had actually tried to talk to Amy between dates, but it was via trying to go to Amy's place of work (where she'd been fired from but she hadn't told Charley that) and just never saw her there. And this is also the part where Amy contemplates whether she actually loves Charley or if she's just obsessed with the idea of romance (though she still falls into the "oh no I actually DO love Charley!" side of things, which for me... Yeah I don't believe it but okay)
The last third of the book also shows gay marriage hopefully becoming legal in Oklahoma, and has Amy realising she doesn't want to play the straight bridesmaid anymore and goes into wedding planning and baking with a focus on queer-safe spaces and queer couples instead, and the epilogue shows how successful this new business is 10 years later. It was cute.
I found the writing style of this book incredibly boring, and it was too light on dialogue for me, but when there WAS dialogue is often ended up being incredible preachy. Some of the paragraphs are SO long and just go into way too much unnecessary detail. None of the characters are written to have any personality, especially Amy - until we get to the last third of the book, where I realised Amy has no personality on purpose, because she's such a people-pleaser she just chameleons herself into being what the characters (and the author) need her to be in any given scene.
The concept of this book is great, but I did not like the execution. The only interesting parts of the first 65% of this book were the scenes in which Amy is at a wedding, of which there are 3. Everything between weddings was completely dull, especially her romance with Charley.
If you're looking for a cute Sapphic romance book, keep looking. The romance in this book is such a let down. The characters barely spend any time together, don't talk via texts at all, and if they actually get to know each other at all it's done off-page. Charley felt like she had SO many red flags (doesn't text Amy at all after the first date, seems very secretive, rushes out of the house right after the first time they have sex and then doesn't text Amy at all after that either). Amy is always the one to contact Charley first and plan the dates. I was honestly expecting/hoping this would be one of those switcheroo romances where you think the love interest is the first person the main character meets, only to find out later than the love interest is a different, better, character (ala Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall), but unfortunately that was not the case here.
And then Amy goes and tells Charley she loves her suddenly at a New Year's party, before they've even discussed if they're girlfriends or exclusive, and I was like ???????????????? You don't even know her, you just like the idea of her!
This is why I liked the last third of the book, and why it saved the book for me. After Charley runs away from Amy's sudden love confession, Amy gets into a fight with her best friend which was honestly the emotional highlight of the story. It's also revealed in this part that Charley had actually tried to talk to Amy between dates, but it was via trying to go to Amy's place of work (where she'd been fired from but she hadn't told Charley that) and just never saw her there. And this is also the part where Amy contemplates whether she actually loves Charley or if she's just obsessed with the idea of romance (though she still falls into the "oh no I actually DO love Charley!" side of things, which for me... Yeah I don't believe it but okay)
The last third of the book also shows gay marriage hopefully becoming legal in Oklahoma, and has Amy realising she doesn't want to play the straight bridesmaid anymore and goes into wedding planning and baking with a focus on queer-safe spaces and queer couples instead, and the epilogue shows how successful this new business is 10 years later. It was cute.