Review - "Worth the Wait"

Worth the Wait, Out in Portland #3
by Karelia Stetz-Waters
rating: ☆☆☆
published: 19th June 2018
spoilers? some

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

I spent a lot of this book on the fence over how much I actually liked it. On the one hand, the characters were good, and really soft together, but on the other hand, there were a few things about them that annoyed me.

Worth the Wait is a second chance romance between Avery Crown, the one half of a presenter duo of a popular redecorating show, and Merritt Lessing, the best friend she left behind without a goodbye. They are reunited when Avery comes to Portland for a high school reunion, combined with an opportunity for her show.

One thing I really want from a romance is a slowburn, and this, in a way, was a slowburn, but it was a bit of a strange one. Firstly, around 12% through, they're having sex. Then comes about 50% where Avery wants sex but Merritt's too worried about getting hurt, but it's not really a slowburn, because they've already had sex and the tension has kind of bled out of it. So this was, while still good, a bit drab I guess?

And then there was this whole section where Merritt was considering outing Avery and ruining her life in revenge for what happened at prom 15 years ago. And Iliana, her friend, who is also a lesbian, encourages her to do this too. In the end, she decides not to, not because outing someone is shitty and you shouldn't do it ever, but because she doesn't want to hurt specifically Avery. So that was a fun part of the story. Definitely what I want from a book, to tell me that outing someone who hurt you isn't an inherently bad thing.

So that definitely made me like Merritt less than Avery. Because if someone I was interested in had even considered outing me, I would be so pissed off. (Not to mention this was around the point where Merritt kept making Avery cry, so I just wanted to fight.) But at the other end of the spectrum, Alistair sometimes felt like he was trying to push Avery to stay in the closet because otherwise she'd lose the show. Thank god Avery had a decent friend in DX at least. (And don't even mention the mess where Venner tries to get Avery and Alistair to fake a marriage on TV to get away from the lesbian rumours. It was messy.)

Another problem I had with this was that the writing feels really choppy. It's all short sentences, with the occasional long one thrown in, and it feels disrupted. There's not really a flow to it and so it was kind of hard to read. And I don't remember the other book by this author I read being like that.

Last point: there was the following part early on in the book, after it's mentioned that Alistair is asexual.

Alistair was so good. He wasn't dreaming of his lover and the next time he'd be able to push his throbbing genitals against another person's body. He was thinking about sick children.

Because yes, apparently only asexual people are good. Everyone else is just too busy thinking about sex to bother with charity! (This reminded me overly much of some homophobic tumblr rhetoric, so I wasn't best pleased.)

Besides all that, I did actually like the book, because these parts were relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. I just didn't love it, sadly.