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A review by tobyw
The Secret Service of Tea and Treason by India Holton
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Didn't really do it for me.
I found the writing style cute at first but it quickly became grating. There were a couple really funny lines, but it mostly floundered in a repetitive word salad. It did that annoying thing of refusing to commit to omniscient or limited, so we kinda just... floated, with the occasional jarring reference to 21st century pop culture.
Two problems engendered by the weak POV choice were "telling over showing" and failure to raise the stakes. We're constantly being told how dangerous etc. a character is, and frequently by one-upping the other characters (ie. So-and-so's raised eyebrow is more dangerous that a whole horde of pirates). But none of it hits because it's all icing and no cake. You haven't even convinced me the pirates are dangerous yet. This doesn't work. The most convinced I was of the pirates' dangerousness was early in the book, when Alice and Daniel are almost shot down on their way to Starkthorn. After that, it was a slow roll downwards. No one even gets hurt in this book, let alone killed. It's just farcical to witter on about how deadly everyone is when there's literally nothing to back it up. The one character who DOES actually try to kill a bunch of people (not in a quirky "hehe murder attempt" way, in a way that is treated by the narrative as an actual threat) is NOT counted among the characters that gets a bunch of hay made about what a threat they are.
The middle of the book was meandering. I'm sure it would be more compelling if you were invested in the romance, but it's a pity that a fun plot set-up got sidelined so hard. The romance didn't really compel me; I wish there was more substance to it besides literature quotes and sexual attraction. I guess I don't read these kinds of light romances very often (I loved One Last Stop, which is the closest comparison I can think of from my reading history) but it was genuinely kind of weird how often the book would just spout a cliche completely unaltered, and I'd read on, expecting some kind of subversion, but... no, it was literally just... the cliche. Their first meeting is probably the most egregious example, but I may have gone numb to it a 100 pages in.
Are Cecilia/Ned and Alex/Charlotte the protagonists of the previous books? I had a bit of trouble differentiating between them. There's a point near the end where Alice sees either Charlotte or Cecilia's personal library flying house and gets all misty-eyed and yearning, and then Daniel gets her a similar house... I dunno. Just seemed like a lack of creativity and variation in characters.
I appreciate the attempt at autism and neurodiverse representation, which I clocked early on but didn't know about going in, although it fell short in a couple of places. I think the high point was establishing Alice's variable discomfort with being touched; it's appropriate for a romance and it felt mostly true to life. I saw a complaint from another reviewer (on goodreads, I think) that they felt that Daniel "cured" too much of Alice's autistic characteristics. I don't entirely agree because I related a lot to the exploration of "I hate being touched unless it's by you, sometimes, in a particular way". That being said, I was a little put-off by how their big sex scene heavily relies on descriptions of Daniel breaking all the rules Alice set up about touching her. Not hot, dude.
Also, Daniel? He was clearly also being set up as autistic, but I had more gripes with how *his* autism is put on hold whenever things are getting hot and heavy. I'm not surprised that Austen-lite emulations like to go heavy on the "male protagonist being extremely courteous and deferring to the woman's desires" thing, but it felt more like Daniel's personality was erased to default back to Male Romantic Lead whenever things were getting intimate. He was of course way more sexually experienced than her, and she was pure and innocent as a flower.
That's where the representation really did not work for me. Alice's autism ends up infantilizing her with how thickly the author lays on the "she doesn't understand figurative speech" thing. Daniel, meanwhile, has no obvious problem with it. He gets sexual innuendo easily; Alice is the one who constantly needs enlightening. We're told in his internal monologue that he doesn't have an imagination and thinks very concretely, but it's telling over showing, and not a convenient excuse to make the female lead completely sexually naive.
Furthermore, Alice going on about how she doesn't like social interaction stretched my suspension of disbelief. It's just... a really bizarre thing to harp on for someone whose profession is SPYING? The author almost stuck the landing with Alice occasionally trying to match micro-expressions to the ones she learned out of a book -- that would've actually worked, with her applying a very analytical approach to situations that are intuitive for other people -- but it's constantly undercut by Alice going on about how she can't hold a conversation and doesn't like talking to people. Felt like autism was being watered down to "can't talk to people disorder".
I wasn't really expecting a rollercoaster, but the plot was pretty predictable. Even the author seemed to feel like it, because the theoretical climax of the plot fell apart TWICE before we got the big action sequence (which was barely over 20 pages and very easily resolved). The world seems so quirky and fun but maybe because it's the third book the author was getting bored with it and just wanted to focus on the romance. Oh, well.
The one twist I did enjoy wasV-2's reveal. Suddenly, all the tropey situations that I had to suspend my disbelief for had an actual plot explanation backing them up. That was good.
The book also gets strangely angsty in the last sequence with A.U.N.T., which didn't land especially well for me because I didn't feel as though we were adequately introduced to Alice and Daniel before they became obsessed with each other. I'm not really invested in them. It was also a jarring tonal shift that wasn't handled with a deft hand. Until the mission is over, the narration is just peppered with jokes about which particular regulations they're breaking by smooching. A.U.N.T. is treated as goofily as everything else. I didn't feel like they were in sincere jeopardy.
That being said, I know the kind of person who would enjoy this. It's super tropey, HEAVY HEAVY on romance, very cutesy, guaranteed to end with the characters married and pumping out babies. I probably would've loved this book when I was 14. It was readable, at least. Could've been great.
I found the writing style cute at first but it quickly became grating. There were a couple really funny lines, but it mostly floundered in a repetitive word salad. It did that annoying thing of refusing to commit to omniscient or limited, so we kinda just... floated, with the occasional jarring reference to 21st century pop culture.
Two problems engendered by the weak POV choice were "telling over showing" and failure to raise the stakes. We're constantly being told how dangerous etc. a character is, and frequently by one-upping the other characters (ie. So-and-so's raised eyebrow is more dangerous that a whole horde of pirates). But none of it hits because it's all icing and no cake. You haven't even convinced me the pirates are dangerous yet. This doesn't work. The most convinced I was of the pirates' dangerousness was early in the book, when Alice and Daniel are almost shot down on their way to Starkthorn. After that, it was a slow roll downwards. No one even gets hurt in this book, let alone killed. It's just farcical to witter on about how deadly everyone is when there's literally nothing to back it up. The one character who DOES actually try to kill a bunch of people (not in a quirky "hehe murder attempt" way, in a way that is treated by the narrative as an actual threat) is NOT counted among the characters that gets a bunch of hay made about what a threat they are.
The middle of the book was meandering. I'm sure it would be more compelling if you were invested in the romance, but it's a pity that a fun plot set-up got sidelined so hard. The romance didn't really compel me; I wish there was more substance to it besides literature quotes and sexual attraction. I guess I don't read these kinds of light romances very often (I loved One Last Stop, which is the closest comparison I can think of from my reading history) but it was genuinely kind of weird how often the book would just spout a cliche completely unaltered, and I'd read on, expecting some kind of subversion, but... no, it was literally just... the cliche. Their first meeting is probably the most egregious example, but I may have gone numb to it a 100 pages in.
Are Cecilia/Ned and Alex/Charlotte the protagonists of the previous books? I had a bit of trouble differentiating between them. There's a point near the end where Alice sees either Charlotte or Cecilia's personal library flying house and gets all misty-eyed and yearning, and then Daniel gets her a similar house... I dunno. Just seemed like a lack of creativity and variation in characters.
I appreciate the attempt at autism and neurodiverse representation, which I clocked early on but didn't know about going in, although it fell short in a couple of places. I think the high point was establishing Alice's variable discomfort with being touched; it's appropriate for a romance and it felt mostly true to life. I saw a complaint from another reviewer (on goodreads, I think) that they felt that Daniel "cured" too much of Alice's autistic characteristics. I don't entirely agree because I related a lot to the exploration of "I hate being touched unless it's by you, sometimes, in a particular way". That being said, I was a little put-off by how their big sex scene heavily relies on descriptions of Daniel breaking all the rules Alice set up about touching her. Not hot, dude.
Also, Daniel? He was clearly also being set up as autistic, but I had more gripes with how *his* autism is put on hold whenever things are getting hot and heavy. I'm not surprised that Austen-lite emulations like to go heavy on the "male protagonist being extremely courteous and deferring to the woman's desires" thing, but it felt more like Daniel's personality was erased to default back to Male Romantic Lead whenever things were getting intimate. He was of course way more sexually experienced than her, and she was pure and innocent as a flower.
That's where the representation really did not work for me. Alice's autism ends up infantilizing her with how thickly the author lays on the "she doesn't understand figurative speech" thing. Daniel, meanwhile, has no obvious problem with it. He gets sexual innuendo easily; Alice is the one who constantly needs enlightening. We're told in his internal monologue that he doesn't have an imagination and thinks very concretely, but it's telling over showing, and not a convenient excuse to make the female lead completely sexually naive.
Furthermore, Alice going on about how she doesn't like social interaction stretched my suspension of disbelief. It's just... a really bizarre thing to harp on for someone whose profession is SPYING? The author almost stuck the landing with Alice occasionally trying to match micro-expressions to the ones she learned out of a book -- that would've actually worked, with her applying a very analytical approach to situations that are intuitive for other people -- but it's constantly undercut by Alice going on about how she can't hold a conversation and doesn't like talking to people. Felt like autism was being watered down to "can't talk to people disorder".
I wasn't really expecting a rollercoaster, but the plot was pretty predictable. Even the author seemed to feel like it, because the theoretical climax of the plot fell apart TWICE before we got the big action sequence (which was barely over 20 pages and very easily resolved). The world seems so quirky and fun but maybe because it's the third book the author was getting bored with it and just wanted to focus on the romance. Oh, well.
The one twist I did enjoy was
The book also gets strangely angsty in the last sequence with A.U.N.T., which didn't land especially well for me because I didn't feel as though we were adequately introduced to Alice and Daniel before they became obsessed with each other. I'm not really invested in them. It was also a jarring tonal shift that wasn't handled with a deft hand. Until the mission is over, the narration is just peppered with jokes about which particular regulations they're breaking by smooching. A.U.N.T. is treated as goofily as everything else. I didn't feel like they were in sincere jeopardy.
That being said, I know the kind of person who would enjoy this. It's super tropey, HEAVY HEAVY on romance, very cutesy, guaranteed to end with the characters married and pumping out babies. I probably would've loved this book when I was 14. It was readable, at least. Could've been great.
Content Warnings
Minor: Child abuse