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A review by kaulhilo
How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang
goodreads crashed while i was writing my review and now i have to die. i had so much to say! but now i’m just pissed omfg.
i think the biggest thing that jumped out about this was how this reads more like a screenplay than a novel. and i tried very hard to ignore it, but it’s honestly just unavoidable. the writing is dense and takes a while to get used to - because, understandably, it’s dealing with some very difficult topics and rationale but unfortunately it didn’t translate the same for the plot. i couldn’t decipher the romance, not really. i understand the animosity (somewhat), and i understood the collision but i did not see or feel any reason why they held together for their impending connection and romance. they had a few cute moments, but mostly they just had a lot of sex*. which is annoying? as someone who is decidedly not a fan of extended smut in a book being sold purely as a romance, it was something of a shame. especially, and maybe pointedly because the emotional weight was entirely too heavy to be held up singlehandedly under sex and sex and more sex. it’s tiring. TALK!
*this is not to say it was badly written or whatever, just that i didn’t like it as much for a story that was entirely too dependent on emotional blockages and attachments.
the characters, on their own, on the other hand - are two people i loved reading about and discovering, from their backgrounds to idiosyncrasies to flaws, they were written almost entirely well (especially helen!) and i loved their musings and personal headways. asian households and eldest daughters and their fragmented but tied together relationships with their parents… oh. i loved it so much. i wouldn’t go as far as to say it was spotless, but it did throw me for a loop as to why this book was planned and written as a romance, when it could’ve done so well as a litfic following two people suffering the same momentum.
and lastly, i can barely forget to mention. the last 10% of this book was done so, so well and just such an incredible joy to read, it almost made me forget the camouflaging in the rest of the story. if the entire book had been written the same way, with a nod to what the book was supposed to be about all along, with something i could honestly connect to! a couple i could truly root for! i would’ve loved this so much more and it would’ve ended up easily as one of my favorite books.
thank you to avon for the arc.
i think the biggest thing that jumped out about this was how this reads more like a screenplay than a novel. and i tried very hard to ignore it, but it’s honestly just unavoidable. the writing is dense and takes a while to get used to - because, understandably, it’s dealing with some very difficult topics and rationale but unfortunately it didn’t translate the same for the plot. i couldn’t decipher the romance, not really. i understand the animosity (somewhat), and i understood the collision but i did not see or feel any reason why they held together for their impending connection and romance. they had a few cute moments, but mostly they just had a lot of sex*. which is annoying? as someone who is decidedly not a fan of extended smut in a book being sold purely as a romance, it was something of a shame. especially, and maybe pointedly because the emotional weight was entirely too heavy to be held up singlehandedly under sex and sex and more sex. it’s tiring. TALK!
*this is not to say it was badly written or whatever, just that i didn’t like it as much for a story that was entirely too dependent on emotional blockages and attachments.
the characters, on their own, on the other hand - are two people i loved reading about and discovering, from their backgrounds to idiosyncrasies to flaws, they were written almost entirely well (especially helen!) and i loved their musings and personal headways. asian households and eldest daughters and their fragmented but tied together relationships with their parents… oh. i loved it so much. i wouldn’t go as far as to say it was spotless, but it did throw me for a loop as to why this book was planned and written as a romance, when it could’ve done so well as a litfic following two people suffering the same momentum.
and lastly, i can barely forget to mention. the last 10% of this book was done so, so well and just such an incredible joy to read, it almost made me forget the camouflaging in the rest of the story. if the entire book had been written the same way, with a nod to what the book was supposed to be about all along, with something i could honestly connect to! a couple i could truly root for! i would’ve loved this so much more and it would’ve ended up easily as one of my favorite books.
thank you to avon for the arc.