Point Form Book Reviews are my way of reviewing books that I don’t necessarily have a lot to say about but still want to share a little on. So here are my thoughts on Consider Yourself Kissed:
- Coralie is an Australian immigrant to London. Ok, that’s an interesting premise
- Something Happened to cause her sudden departure from Australia. As a result, Coralie is closed off and not very adventurous.
- She meets Adam and his young daughter whose name I can’t remember anymore.
- (It’s Zora.)
- They keep running into each other. Is this a coincidence? Is Adam creepy? It’s hard to tell.
- He learns that Coralie lives above a bar and it’s loud and so he offers to let her sleep at his house while he sleeps at her apartment.
- AND SHE SAYS YES???!!!
- This is, like, the second time they’ve met.
- Who would say yes to this? No woman I’ve ever met would think this was a good, relaxing thing to do. I would 100% assume that Adam has set me up to be attacked by a third party when I reach his house.
- Is the author trying to demonstrate to us that Coralie makes poor choices?
- Somehow, this whole thing is just blown past and Coralie and Adam end up together. (Not a spoiler as this is clear from the first chapter.)
- From here we have an interesting story that steadily unfolds, depicting how these two people join their lives together.
- Coralie moves in with Adam and Zora and while they both work full-time, Coralie steadily takes on more and more of the parenting responsibilities.
- Coralie wants children of their own but Adam keeps putting it off.
- Then they have kids and Coralie takes on more responsibilities.
- At one point they are renovating the house and they are not married and I found myself really wanting to know if Coralie’s name was on the deed to the house. It’s made clear that she’s putting her savings into this renovation but neither of them have thought to protect her investment if they break up.
- They both make really poor decisions and this is stressing me out!
- Adam is a political writer/podcaster and every time there is a new prime minister he writes a biography of them (I think?)
- So he keeps having really intense periods of work and Coralie keeps being left to pick up the slack and I am increasingly unsure why either of them liked each other to begin with.
- I am not British enough for this book. There’s a lot of political talk and although I know the big names like Theresa May and Boris Johnson, of course, I felt like there was a lot of nuance I wasn’t getting.
- Like, Adam’s ex-wife marries a man they all refer to as Tory Tom and I don’t really get what that means. I can make an assumption based on the Conservative Party in my own country but I’m not sure it’s accurate and the book never explains it in context.
- My library classified this as a romance but it is very much Not Romantic and mostly just exhausting.
- No relationship has a completely equal 50/50 split, especially when one partner births children, but, my goodness, we can do better than this!
Karissa Reads Books 
Totally agree that this is far from being a romance novel. I liked it more for having ambition, but there’s always the danger that it’ll tip over into being a “having kids will ruin your relationship” novel, which is a subgenre I really hate. I ended up liking it, though, partly because the supporting characters are so well done and partly because I think the whole novel is quietly about surviving parental abuse and trying to break the cycle with your own kids, which is a way more interesting (to me) approach.
Oh, that’s an interesting perspective that I didn’t really pick up on. I did appreciate the dynamic of Adam’s mother who is present but not really nurturing because I felt like that’s not really a maternal relationship we see much in media but it’s definitely one I’ve seen in real life. I did think the author nailed it in many ways when depicting a relationship where one partner (usually the woman) picks up more of the load than the other. Adam isn’t a bad guy but he’s unconsciously used to the women in his life doing a lot of labour for him and Coralie steps into that without being fully aware and neither knows how to break those habits. It’s something I’ve discussed with many friends who are mom; we have great partners but we almost all carry a greater emotional load of parenting than our male partners. You both have to work really hard to break those social expectations.
Wait, so did the guy have kids from a previous relationship? I thought it was just him and his (I assumed) elderly mother. Weirdly, this book sounds really old to me, like one of those books from the early 1900s where someone is has a bundle of kids but their wife dies, so they go wifey shopping because no man is capable of caring for children (apparently, that was the feeling back in the day). Even my own family did that. We had a relative that everyone called “Granny Aunt” because she was married to a man who died. His brother had a farm nearby and no wife, so she married the brother and they combined farms and kids. (The brother might have had a wife who died and kids, too? I can’t remember). Anyway, what is a 21st century book doing the same thing??
Yes, he has a daughter from a previous relationship and shared custody with his ex-wife. His mother is a character in the book but doesn’t live with him and is pretty closed off. I wouldn’t say he goes out seeking a woman to care for his daughter but Coralie steps into that role very quickly and he’s very willing for her to do so. (Which also left me questioning because I don’t think I would accept someone as a parental figure in my child’s life so quickly.) Your comment reminded me of the book Sarah, Plain and Tall and how weird that a children’s book had that as the plot line?!
I don’t ever recall reading Sarah, Plain and Tall.
It’s a middle grade novel from the 80s where a 19th century homesteader advertises for a wife because he needs someone to raise his children. Sarah is the woman who comes to live with them.
This does sound like a stressful book to read! I would also have been very worried about Coralie accepting his offer to sleep at his flat. I mean, who would do that?!
Right?? My coworker read this book and said that she felt like she couldn’t recommend it to anyone because that initial decision would throw so many readers. We agreed that no woman in real life would take a strange man up on that offer.