Right off the
bat, I just want to start off this review by saying that one of the main
reasons why I decided to read and review The Rebel by Joanne Rock is
because not only is the romance genre one of my favorite genres of books to
read, it’s also my favorite genre of books to write reviews for. Surprisingly,
I barely read or reviewed any books within the romance genre last year; so one
of my reading goals for 2020 is to not only read and review more books within
the romance genre in general, it’s also my goal to review Harlequin romance novels
for my blog on a hopefully relatively regular basis, and I ultimately decided to
kick off pursuing that particular goal of mine by reading and reviewing this
book.
(Check out my review for Andrea Laurence's Harlequin Desire novel, The CEO's Unexpected Child, here.)
Reading Harlequin
romance novels has honestly been one of my favorite guilty pleasures in life
ever since I was in the eighth or ninth grade, and I’m thirty-two years-old
now. While The Rebel is one Harlequin romance novel that I bought on a
whim when I was at Barnes & Noble one day in November; rather than being a
book that pre-ordered on Amazon like I essentially stockpile a bunch of
Harlequin’s new releases every month, I’m ultimately so, so, so glad that I
decided to buy this book, because reading it really reminded me of why I’ve
always loved Harlequin romance novels so much! Honestly, I found The Rebel
to be very satisfying and enjoyable for reasons beyond the obvious romance
aspect of the book. The plot of The Rebel and Rock’s writing for the
book featured several of my favorite storytelling tropes that I absolutely love,
aside from loving the romance genre; namely stories involving dysfunctional
families, and revenge plots. Considering the fact that The Rebel and
Harlequin Desire romance novels in general are fairly short, it’s very possible
that Rock could have easily written this book in such a way that the writing
came across as if she was trying to do too much in a short amount of time, page
wise. Instead, as weird as this might sound to some people, when I first
started reading The Rebel, I was repeatedly gushing over all of the
things that I was loving about the book in my head in a way that reminded me a
lot of Bill Hader playing the character, Stefon, on Saturday Night Live.
While it’s not
a Harlequin romance novel, Stephenie Meyer’s novella, Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, continues to stand out to me several years after
having read it, as a book where the author was trying to do way too much in
terms of plot in a book that’s fairly short; because it wasn’t just simply a
gender swap version of Twilight (The book). The last portion of the book
took an incredibly rushed and chaotic turn when Meyer started to cram elements
from Breaking Dawn, if not the entire main part of the Twilight
series, into the ending of Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined; and it
was ultimately just way too much action and plot to include in a book that’s technically
a novella. Fortunately, Rock definitely found a variety of ways to avoid the
problem of having The Rebel ultimately turn out to be a book where it felt
like she was trying to do way too much in too short amount of time.
One of the main
things that Rock did that I think really helped her to avoid the problem of
potentially having The Rebel be a book where it felt like she was trying
to do way too much in a relatively short amount of time, page-wise, was establish
the fact that Marcus and Lily already knew each other prior to the events that
take place in the book. Doing this made it so that Rock didn’t need to spend a
lot of time having them get to know each other before anything romantic even
happened between them. Rock definitely hit the right balance between conveying
to the reader that Marcus and Lily already knew each other prior to the events
that take place in this book, and Marcus’ brother, Devon, hiring Lily to be his
emissary for the job that they were all working on; while also portraying Marcus
and Lily’s relationship throughout the course of the book in such a way that
the evolution of the romance between them doesn’t lack build up, or leave the
reader feeling left out on the details of their previously established
professional relationship.
The other thing
that I thought also really helped develop the characters, the romantic
relationship between Marcus and Lily, and the overall plot of the book is the
fact that Rock did a really good job of using Marcus’, Lily’s, and Regina’s
internal narratives as a way to convey their backstories, get the reader
emotionally invested in them as characters, and help move the plot of the book forward;
without having the overall pacing of the book feel too rushed. Plus, despite
the fact that Eliot didn’t really even have a physical presence in The Rebel
until the part of the book where Lily finally got ahold of Eliot when she
called him in order to break off their engagement; I thought that Rock still
did a great job of effectively conveying to the reader that Lily didn’t have
genuine romantic feelings for Eliot, she didn’t even seem to miss him while she
was away from him in order to work with Marcus, and she was mostly planning to
marry him for the sake of her family’s business.
I felt like
Marcus and Lily were both very mature and likable characters, especially as
they tried to find a way to successfully navigate mixing business with pleasure.
I’ve definitely read a variety of romance novels over the years where the guy
is unlikable, the girl is annoying and unlikable, or the writing for the
romantic relationship between the couple that the book is centered around is
problematic for one reason or another; which is typically due to bad writing,
especially if the book suffers from a combination of these problems. Thankfully,
as a longtime fan of Harlequin romance novels and the romance genre in general,
I have yet to read a Harlequin romance novel where I’ve had those kind of
complaints about the book.
Even though
Lily got the distinct impression that Eliot had been fooling around with other
women behind her back when she called him in order to break off their
engagement, I still thought that he reacted to Lily’s decision to end their
engagement in a very calm and mature manner. Ordinarily, I would expect a guy
like Eliot in a romance novel like this to automatically be portrayed as being a
straight-up massive jerk; so, I love the fact that aside from Eliot cheating on
Lily, Rock still managed to subvert my expectations with her writing for Eliot
for the most part. That being said, he did go behind Lily’s back, and tell her
grandparents that she had broken off their engagement when she had wanted to
wait a little while to break the news of their broken engagement to them; which
was definitely a shitty thing for him to do. However, I still thought that Eliot
handled the actual conversation where Lily broke up with him in a pretty calm
manner. Plus, from a storytelling standpoint, I did thoroughly enjoy the drama
that Eliot’s actions created for Lily. When it comes to the character Regina,
considering the fact that her whole subplot in this book revolved around her
embarking on a quest to get revenge on the Salazar family, because the thinly
veiled fictional novel that Alonzo Salazar had written had apparently destroyed
her family; it’s to be completely expected that Rock would portray Regina
Flores as being somewhat of a villain for the Dynasties: Mesa Falls
miniseries.
The award for
least likable characters in The Rebel definitely goes to Lily’s
grandparents. It was pretty shitty of them to just show up unexpectedly, and automatically
be mad at Lily for deciding to break off her engagement to Eliot without even
hearing her side of the story first. They really seemed to care more about the
future of the family business, and how they would benefit from Lily marrying Eliot
as a part of a business merger, than they cared about Lily’s happiness; which I
think is just beyond horrible of them.
As someone who’s
a big fan of stories involving revenge plots, I really enjoyed what we saw of
the subplot involving Regina taking steps to start carrying out a plan to get
revenge against the Salazar family. Regina’s revenge subplot definitely had a
bit of “Count of Monte Cristo” vibe to it that immediately intrigued me. That
being said, the only complaint that I have about The Rebel is the fact
that the whole subplot with Regina setting out on a plan to get revenge on the
Salazar family is barely featured in the book at all. It’s basically simply
hinted at. However, based on the following tweet of Joanne Rock’s that she
tweeted in response to several of my tweets about The Rebel as I was
reading it, I’m guessing that perhaps it wasn’t her intention to do all that
much with the Regina revenge subplot in this book, and her goal for this book
was to simply introduce that storyline and briefly hint at it; so she can develop
the storyline, and flesh it out in more detail in future books of the miniseries.
If it was
indeed Rock’s intention to simply briefly introduce the whole Regina revenge
subplot, and start building up intrigue for that particular storyline in this
book, then she definitely succeeded in doing that. Based on the brief bits of setup
for Regina’s storyline that were featured in this book, I’m very excited to see
where that subplot goes as the Dynasties: Mesa Falls miniseries continues;
especially since Regina is actually using a fake identity as a part of her
revenge plot.
All things considered;
I absolutely loved The Rebel for the most part. While I pretty much have
never gone into reading a Harlequin romance novel expecting it to be a literary
masterpiece, there are still a lot of things about Joanne Rock’s writing for The
Rebel that I really loved and thoroughly enjoyed. The Rebel
definitely exceeded the expectations that I had for the book prior to reading
it. As far as I’m concerned, Rock did a great job of handling the character and
plot development throughout the course of the book, especially considering the
fact that this is a fairly short book. I really enjoyed Marcus and Lily as individual
characters, and I love the way that the romance between them played out throughout
the course of the book. As someone who’s also a huge fan of stories centered
around familial drama, the dysfunctional family aspect of The Rebel between
Marcus and Devon really enhanced my enjoyment of the book. As I said earlier, I’m
also a really big fan of stories involving characters carrying out plans for
revenge against others, so I also really enjoyed what we saw of Regina’s
subplot in this book. That being said, the only complaint that I have about The
Rebel is that I definitely think that Rock should have featured Regina’s
subplot in the book a little bit more than she did. Aside from that one
complaint, the fact that The Rebel involved Marcus and Lily trying to
navigate mixing business with pleasure, Marcus and Devon dealing with their
family drama, and Regina setting out on a quest for revenge all made it a great
guilty pleasure book that I would definitely recommend to other fans of
Harlequin romance novels, and the romance genre in general.
That being
said, my score for The Rebel is 10 out of 10.
No comments :
Post a Comment