Kay’s review of Embracing the Dawn

I emotion a bully redemption yarn, and this 1 is decidedly good. Jinx is an ex-convict trying to make it connected nan outs; EJ is nan closeted (and clueless) businesswoman who falls for her. Their budding romance is really nice. Their friends are awesome additions, excessively – particularly Reggie and Sparkle, nan mates who helped Jinx past successful situation and readjust to nan free world. Kudos to writer Jeannie Levig for going for thing real, alternatively of nan tired-out imagination tropes truthful celebrated successful wlw romances (Hollywood starlets, elite sports, business tycoons, etc.).

Where Levig falters is successful nan implausibility of a number of nan crippled points astir which nan romance revolves, which made it difficult for maine to prolong immoderate suspension of disbelief. A fewer examples (and I’ll effort not to spoil anything):

The logic for Jinx’s falling retired pinch her half-sister – a suspense constituent until nan novel’s last gasps – is silly and implausible, arsenic is nan half-sister’s abrupt self-revelation. Also improbable is nan half-sister’s behaviour toward Jinx while she is incarcerated. It was excessively callous to beryllium believable.

The demeanor of EJ’s big boy toward Jinx erstwhile they first met was besides complete nan apical and unbelievable.

Jinx’s life successful situation sounds much for illustration a stereotyped type of nan perils successful a men’s prison, alternatively than emblematic life successful a women’s situation (especially a national women’s prison, which is wherever a female convicted of Jinx’s crime would go).

So, doing nan math: 5 stars for nan romance and nan redemption narrative, minus 1.5 stars for each of nan flimsy and unsustainable crippled holes and devices, equals 3.5 stars, rounded up.