hello everyone! today i am going to be talking about twice shy by sarah hogle. i gave this book 3/5 stars. honestly, i liked this book, but i feel like it was honestly nothing special, which honestly sucked cause so many people love this author, but i honestly didn’t really care about it.
trigger warning- panic attack / disorder, mental illness, child abuse, death, emotional abuse, grief, sexual content.
honestly, i think my biggest issue with this book was probably maybell. like, as a whole, i feel like she was getting pushed around by everyone at work, and she never really did anything about it. and also just like kind of went crawling back to gemma, the girl from her work. like, for one, gemma had some crush on this guy, and i don’t even thing that maybell knew, and he starting flirting with maybell, and then gemma was this bitch to her, and then maybell just went right back to gemma. which, i honestly got so annoyed with, since i think it was just so annoying, and than maybell tried to justify it by, that she is the bosses daughter.
but, another thing that also annoyed me so much was the whole catfish situation. like, when maybell brought it up to wesley, since he was the guy that gemma used, he questioned it like once or twice, and pretty much just dropped it. and like, i feel like the whole catfish situation was not handled not well at all. like, i feel like they needed to talk about it more, and explain more about it or some kind of closure at all. and also, after this, i honestly just made gemma the villain once and for all, and not even kind of brush it off.
another thing i honestly didn’t really like about maybell was that she had this whole coffee shop AU, which i just didn’t like. like, this whole AU, which the man in there is wesley, which just makes this all so much weirder. and i honestly thought the whole AU was so weird, since it literally had no part in this story and that i really didn’t care for it. and with the man in there being wesley, it honestly made it seem like some of the parts of this book weren’t real, like the whole painting part. and i honestly think it was so weird, since in away, everything could have been this whole AU, and they might not have even got together, in away. and i guess with her head in the clouds so much, it just made this book not as good, and just took away from the story.
but, as for wesley, i honestly liked him, and i honestly liked him as a character. though, i do feel like that they never really explored his past, and explored more about him than just he’s hot and he works for her great aunt, or whatever the dead lady was to maybell. and i wish that they just fleshed him out more. but, i did really liked the plot about his social anxiety, and the plot about his anxiety was honestly the best part of the book. and in my mind, wesley honestly reminds me so much of cal from shadow and bone.
i also feel like the end of this book was a mess. like, for one, i don’t even know if the end was even the real end of the book, since she is such a day dreamer. and also, i feel like when they fell in love, it just solved all of their issues, and anything that happened before that was hard with their life just went away. and also i feel like maybell just got a backbone out of literally nowhere, which i think was just so odd by itself. and than how he just got over his anxiety was so weird, like i get that you want to do things that you might be scared of for someone you love, i just felt like it was still kind of odd.
but, as for the romance, i honestly didn’t really like the romance, and honestly not believe it. cause, i feel like this really gave this whole ‘romance completely fixed their life’ vibe. and also that i feel that there was so many things that they needed to fix so much of the book, but they never honestly did. and i feel like they literally had zero banter, which i honestly didn’t like at all. like going from wesley hating her one second, and then being all puppy love the next, i honestly hated it so much, and i couldn’t get behind it at all.
and like i feel that so much of this book was underdeveloped, between the characters and the romance and everything else, i honestly couldn’t take it. like i feel that they honestly were so not good together. and i feel like the sex scene in this was terrible, since it literally just faded to black. and also that the whole plot of them going to scotland just didn’t make sense to me. like, they made all of these points that maybell was tight on money, hence why she wanted to keep a lot of stuff to sell to make money and just like save things for her to wear and stuff. which, i think that her being able to pick up and go to scotland and then have to pay for the hotel and the food and whatever tour they were going to go and whatever they were gonna find.
i also feel like the whole cleaning up the big house and the whole treasure hunting plot was so stupid. like, i feel that it was honestly so stupid, cause they pretty much just gave it here and was like, talking about fixing the house, but not even in an interesting way, since it was just so boring and nothing even happened. and like when wesley built that coffee shops from maybell’s AU’s was honestly cute, but just still so weird. and i honestly so strange and i honestly didn’t really like the whole renovation plot.
anyway, that is all for today! i honestly didn’t care about this book at all, which i’m kind of sad about cause everyone seem to like it, and all of the people that i’m friends with / follow on goodreads loved this book but it honestly just fell short for me. which, i honestly think it wasn’t the best book for me, but i do feel like it has the potential.
r.bookish 