Content Warning: At First Spite deals with depression and past trauma directly on the page. I discuss these topics vaguely in the spoiler free section and in more specificity in the spoiler section. It also includes a scene with one of the MCs administering vaccines as part of their job as a physician. As a Trypanophobe myself, I was able to listen to that scene but it did make me anxious. There's enough warning to skip it. The foreword of the book includes a more detailed CW warning.
“Love makes you helpless. You think about the object of your affection all the time. Your happiness or misery depends on another person’s mood. You give up all power over yourself, hand it to the person you love, and trust that they will be gentle with it.”
There are rare reads for every romance fan when they pick up the right book at the right time. When they see so much of themselves in the book's story that the fiction stops being escapism and starts being therapeutic. When this happens, it is hard for the romance reader to do anything but love that book. It's why I love Roll for Romance.
Content Warnings for this Review (Items in Spoiler Text only appear in the Spoiler Section.)
– The Spoiler Section of this review contains references to the sexually explicit material in Knot My Type and may be considered #NSFW by some.
– References to Low Self Esteem / Low Self Worth
– References to Consensual Bondage
– References to Foster Care
– References to Alcoholism
– References to Cheating
– References to Toxic Exes / Gas Lighting
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a silly man in possession of a mediocre opinion must be in want of an audience.
Before I get to the review, I want to say a few things about misogyny in the American education system. None of my thoughts on the connection between Pride and Prejudice and this topic are original. My authority on this subject is less than that most people reading this review; however, I feel publishing a review for this book without addressing this topic would be dishonest, disrespectful, irresponsible, and careless.
As I expected, Pride and Prejudice is one of the best books I have ever read. While reading it, I kept thinking about the absurdity of Jane Austen not being a U.S. high school English literature curriculum staple like Shakespeare, Dickens, Golding, Orwell, Bradbury, and Steinbeck. Only an idiot would think any of their writing is more approachable to a modern-day teenager than Pride and Prejudice. (1) Jane Austen's jokes are still funny, (2) her story is about things high schoolers can relate to, and (3) her social commentary still matters.1 She belongs at the top of the list if we want high schoolers to read books that are 60+ years old.2
As I read Pride and Prejudice, I reflected on how the only book I was assigned in high school written by a woman was Frankenstein.3 Why did Pride and Prejudice never make the cut? Was it because we believe the boys will reject it and girls will choose to read it on their own? Was it because Romance is a lesser genre and somebody was making sure our education focused on less frivolous things like...reading a romantic drama that ends with a double suicide? I could keep listing reasons4 and they would all probably be true in one way or another, but the simple answer is sexism.
A consequence of this instance of sexism is that I did not discover my love for romance novels until my late 20s.5 Would reading Jane Austen in 11th grade English have changed that? We will never know. It is abhorrent that we cannot move past this concept of books written by women being for women and books written by men being for everybody. We never will get past it if we only assign books written by men in high schools.
One thing was abundantly clear to me upon finishing Pride and Prejudice. If we assigned high school literary based solely on merit Pride and Prejudice would be assigned in every school.
Medium Used: 95% Hardcover Barnes & Noble Classics Edition6 5% ebook via Hoopla
I waited close to a decade to read this book. Since it’s been published, I have graduated college, moved six or seven times, married the most amazing person in the world, and become a father. Through each of these milestones, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, a novella about my second-favorite character from my favorite series, sat on my bookshelf. Periodically, it would leave my bookshelf to accompany me on a trip, but it would never make its way out of my backpack on those trips.
I waited too long to read it. I had always anticipated both the story and the prose to be among the most beautiful and the most eccentric that I have ever read. And although it meant these expectations, reading The Slow Regard of Silent Things more than five years after my most recent reading of The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear is not the way of things. My patience was neither pragmatic, practical¹, nor perspicacious. My patience took away from how much I enjoyed this story, creating a desire to read it again after revisiting its predecessors. Unfortunately, I do not plan to revisit my two favorite books until it is time to read them to my child, as there are too many stories I have yet to experience and too few moments to experience them.
If I had should have read this book right around the time I finished my last read of The Wise Man’s Fear, which is what I recommend anyone reading it for the first time do, I suspect I would consider it a 5/5. It is a wonderful story and, in many ways, a Romance. I think it is meant to be read in one sitting (something I did not do). You may want to double your time budget for a book of this length if you aim to do so—I found the novel’s writing style required me to reread much of it to get the full meaning. I would also take the author’s foreword to heart. It is a great story that is not for everyone.
Overall Rating
⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️
¹ Is this redundant? Perhaps. To me, my strategy should be pragmatic; my execution should be practical.
