Ana María and The Fox

"It was ok "

"3.5 ⭐️"

"IMHO the cover, and title suggested to me that this would be a really cheesy romance. But instead there was some culture and some historical content, I wish there was even a <br/> bit more of Mexico‘s history. In the afterward, the author wrote the drafts prior to printing, had more of that information in it, and I would’ve liked it.<br/><br/>And the Luna sisters will return in a second book, which I’ll probably read"

"Dnf"

"I’m so sad! I was so looking forward to this series and I was severely disappointed.<br/><br/>I loved the idea of a black male lead and a Mexican female lead in a historical romance. The premise? Exquisite. The execution? Deplorable.<br/><br/>First, the male lead is only a quarter, which doesn’t negate any lived experiences he would have had growing up working class with a visibly black mother and grandmother, but in reality, he probably looked more like Wentworth Miller than Rege Jean Page, and he’d be able to pass a lot more easily. It takes a lot of the oomph from his race, and makes his inclusion a lot less daring.<br/><br/>Then, there was all the hand wringing to make sure that you knew that all the characters were on the Right Side of History™️, and don’t you forget it! I truly could have used less of the history regurgitation, because it was so clunky and heavy handed. It dragged on the story flow, and I was honestly quite bored. Include history, sure, but please make it interesting. Don’t stick your lead characters on the pulpit and have them condescend your readers about truths we’ve already accepted. It’s clunky and weird. The characters were all too perfect, and it made them uninteresting. The only real crisis of conscience was when Ana Maria attended the Darwin talk, but even that wasn’t really a factor.<br/><br/>And our conflict? It wasn’t actually introduced until the last 20% of the book, and then it went from 0 to 100. There was enough there to have an interesting conflict without Lord Tyrell’s cartoonish villainy.<br/><br/>Once again, we’re given two leads that have no chemistry outside of instant attraction, and I just do not buy their love. We didn’t earn any part of their relationship. It made any sexual encounter feel awkward and like it belonged to a separate story."

"This book was not as good as I thought it would be. I found it slow and boring. I love historical fiction, but this was definitely more of a romance than historical fiction. I liked the Gideon Fox character and I liked the Luna sisters, but Ana María is the least interesting of the sisters. So will I read the upcoming Luna sisters novels? Yep. I think that one thing this book did quite well is set up the back stories for the other sisters."