Meet You in the Middle by Devon Daniels
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
There’s just one thing standing between liberal Senate staffer Kate Adams and passage of the landmark legislation she’s been fighting for all year: Ben Mackenzie, intimidating gatekeeper for one of DC’s most powerful conservative senators. After Kate and Ben lock horns in a meet-not-so-cute, they vow to take each other down–by any means necessary.
She thinks he’s arrogant (and doesn’t deserve those gorgeous green eyes). He thinks she’s too quick to judge (and irresistibly distracting). But as their endless game of one-upmanship becomes Kate’s favorite part of the day, she starts to wonder if her feelings for Ben are closer to attraction than animosity…and maybe their sparring is flirting. And when Kate realizes there’s more to Ben than meets the eye, she’s forced her to confront her biggest fear: In her sworn enemy, she may have found her perfect match.
DNF @ 30%. I cannot wait to see the reviews start to come in for this one. Whoo-boy.
Also, that DNF is not for the reason most people would think. The male lead was actually fine. More of a fiscal conservative trying to make his party less of a shitshow. Which, as a liberal married to a man who identifies as a moderate republican only because he is fiscally conservative (hates Trump, is socially liberal, pro-immigration, etc, do NOT come after me about it), I GET.
But then you have the liberal female lead. Who proudly declares in the beginning that she’s a feminist and then when she sees another woman hand a man her number, says this little gem:
“I can’t believe women actually do that. It’s so desperate.”
Yes, how desperate for a woman to have agency of her own in the year 2020. To go after what she wants.
And this is simply one example of her outward displays of misogyny in the first third of this book. As for the rest of my issues with her, I’m not going to get into them. Suffice it to say that I could not have dreamed up a better archetype of a character to symbolize everything wrong with white feminism if I tried.
Maybe there’s a point. Maybe by the end she does a total 180, but honestly? That would surprise me after everything I just read.
And now I’m worried that all of this was intentional. Some sort of propaganda to say, “Oh, no, look, republicans are all super nice and it’s the liberals who are really the narrow-minded assholes.”
All in all, I was really looking forward to this one, and now I am deeply unsettled.
Oh no…this sounds horrid lol. I’m so sorry you were introduced to such an unpleasant character haha
It started strong and then just went downhill so fast. I could not believe she was sat there claiming to be open minded and feminist when everything she said and did proved that the opposite was true. I’m so bummed because I loved the premise.
Yeah, it sounds like a mess lol. Thanks for letting me know that this is one that can be avoided haha
I thought the premise sounded good too but reading your review.. yeah no. I will happily skip this one, thanks to you.
No problem. It was so strange for her to be all “rah-rah feminism” and then turn around and be so ugly to other women. She was one of the least self-aware characters I’ve read in a while.
EW. Misogynistic romances can have their own genre. We don’t want them.