Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Fireworks and Stolen Kisses
SERIES: Lijun #1
AUTHOR: Angel Martinez & Freddy MacKay
PUBLISHER: Pride Publishing
LENGTH: 246 pages
RELEASE DATE: June 26, 2018
BLURB:
No. Eating. Pixies.
At the annual Global Lijun Alliance conference in Tokyo, Tally Bastille makes the first impulsive decision of his life. Others perceive his uktena—the enormous legendary serpent that’s his dual-spirit—as a threat, which makes him all too aware that he frightens fellow lijun. But an encounter with a passionate, obviously not-straight otter lijun one evening convinces Tally that he’s found his Em’halafi, his destined match. Tally is determined to barrel through all obstacles to make the match happen, including the otter’s conservative, traditional family.
Trained as a Satislit—a bride-son—Haru Tanaka chafes at the strict boundaries set around their life. They rebel against their clan’s constant attempts to force an arranged match and wish desperately for someone who will love them. At the conference, Haru is horrified to learn their family has accepted an offer for them, one too lucrative for the clan to refuse. Not only has the Urusar sold Haru to a stranger, but the lijun is also a giant snake and one who believes in the tired old superstitions regarding Em’halafi. Threatened with banishment if they refuse, Haru has no choice but to marry the wealthy American serpent.
Back in Tally’s home in Wisconsin, Haru and Tally must navigate both the widening gulf between them as they realize how much they’ve misunderstood about each other, and the tricky politics of the lijun clan Tally leads. Murder, intrigue and increasing hostility threaten to tear apart the little town of Wadiswan and the arranged marriage they’ve barely managed to begin.
REVIEW:
This isn’t something I do very often here on Love Bytes, but due to the fact that I was unable to find another reviewer to take this book over, and the fact that I don’t think you could pay me to finish this book, I’m going to have to break tradition and write a DNF review for this story. I have in the past gone out of my way to avoid having to do this with books given to me for review, but circumstances have conspired to force my hand this time. So please take it under consideration that I only read about half of the story at the time I walked away from this book, so some aspects might have resolved themselves later on and so may impact how others feel about this book. I would really suggest you look for reviews by other readers so that you can get a fuller picture of the story as a whole.
That being said…this review will be me stating my reasons about why I found myself unable and unwilling to continue reading this story. There will be some very mild spoilers, but nothing I think that gives much more away than the blurb did.
To start off with, there were several key reasons I asked to review this book. The first is that I adore arranged marriage stories. And since I don’t often get a chance to read those kinds of tropes all that often these days, I was looking forward to this one. The second factor was that I was happy to see that one of the MCs in this book is agender. It was cool to have more people on the wider LGBTQ+ spectrum represented in romance books, and I do try to review and promote them to a wider audience whenever I come across them. I’ve had luck with several other book by Angel Martinez, and I’ve enjoyed their take on some of the weirder paranormal creatures, so even though I’ve never read anything by Freddy MacKay, I was really excited to see what this story had to offer. The multicultural aspect also really intrigued me.
That being said, except for the beginning scene–where they were apparently nearly black-out drunk–I could not stand how selfish, self-centered, racist (speciest?), vindictive, and just plain intolerable Haru was.
For all that I love arranged-marriage stories, I will admit that one aspect in a lot of them bugs the ever living fuck out of me: the way the characters are always going on about “true love” and how unfair it is that they have to get married to someone they don’t know. Which might seem like an odd complaint by someone who consumes so much romance, but I have always found it to be…I don’t know…anachronistic? Like the author has taken the 21st century cultural expectations and crammed them into this other world without regard to how people in that place would actually react to things after having grown up in a culture that saw arranged marriage as something normal.
This book is set in modern times, but the way the shifter world is presented, especially in Haru’s family and culture, is one of isolation from a lot of the more modern (and American) ideas prevalent in most contemporary romance novels. They are stated to be extremely conservative, and Haru would have grown up in their culture and society knowing that the only kind of marriage that they could realistically expect was an arranged one. From all that I could gather they have grown up in a very well-off family, they have the finest clothes, they have never had to work a day in their life, and have had a lot of time and expense put towards getting them a future in which they will be able to continue living a life of luxury. And I didn’t once hear Haru complaining about any of that…just that they might have to sacrifice something for the first time in their life in order to get it.
I don’t know if this is the reason I react weirdly to these kinds of stories sometimes, but I don’t actually think that romantic love is the only valid reason to get married. I think that if you are willing to tie yourself to someone else, to tell the world that you believe in sticking with them to the point of dealing with all the shit that comes with being married to someone, that is just a valid a reason as if you fell in love with someone and want to stay with them for as long as you can stand each other.
So I have a hard time stomaching Haru’s constant complaints–and downright petty and vindictive jabs at Tally–especially when a) they have come a culture where marriage for romance seems to be the outlier, not the norm and b) Tally is fucking head over heals in love with Haru and they know it. But instead of, I don’t know, trying to get to know Tally, to see if they might actually work together, Haru spends all their time complaining, making Tally feel horrible, and lying to Tally about how willing they were to have sex with him–thereby making the morning after their wedding to be a real fucking shock to Tally when he realized that not only is the person he married fully against the marriage, but that every time they consented and did their best to make it seem like it was fully consensual, that they didn’t actually want to have sex with him.
This is where I noped the fuck out of this book.
That was just a really fucked up thing to do to Tally. I’m sorry. But it was. And I know if Haru had made any effort what so ever to convey to Tally that this marriage wasn’t what they wanted–at any point–Tally would have done his damndest to help Haru out. He probably would have even be totally ok with marrying Haru and then living separately. Hell, it probably would have hurt like fuck, but Tally always struck me as someone who was a genuinely nice guy, and who 100% thought that Haru wanted to marry him, but would have let them go the second Haru said no to any of it.
But despite the fact that Haru showed on multiple occasions a willingness and the ability to work around–if not outright disobey–their parent’s wishes, they never once attempted to tell Tally the truth till after the marriage had happened. They had multiple opportunities, and not once did they take them. And I feel bad for Haru being forced into this marriage against their will…but they never did anything to stop it but be a complete shit to Tally, the one person in all this who would have moved heaven and earth to help them.
What I’m saying is, I found to Haru to be a spoiled, selfish, asshole and I can only hope that this book ended with Tally divorcing the jerk and going on to live a life free of this person that can only think of themselves–and when they don’t get their way, they feel justified in being horrible to everyone around them. I however can’t find any desire in myself to actually finish the story to find out what does end up happening. Because I have severe doubts that the HEA would realistically be happy for anyone.
RATING: DNF
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