The Exception to the Rule - Christina Lauren - ★★★.¾
SERIES: The Improbable Meet-Cute, #1
GENRE: Romance Short Story
PUBLICATION DATE: January 23, 2024
RATING: 3.75 stars.
In a Nutshell: A lovely story about a meet-cute that develops over a decade. Part epistolary. Good main characters. Mostly interesting storyline. Might have been a top-star experience for me had the second half performed better.
Plot Preview:
On February 14th 2013, an email that is supposed to reach a teacher ends up in a student’s inbox, thanks to a typo. The recipient informs the sender, also a student but a stranger, of the mistake, and they both end their conversation by wishing each other a Happy Valentine’s Day.
The next year, one of them decides to wish the other one again. Thus begins an annual exchange of emails on February 14th – no names (it helps that the official school email ids have only initials), no personal identifiers, no photos. As the years go by, the friendship stays strong, but there is an underlying urge to know the other person more. Could they actually meet the person on the other side of the screen without affecting the friendship?
The story comes to us mostly through emails, with about one-third of the story coming through the two characters’ first-person POVs.
This is the first standalone story in the 'The Improbable Meet-Cute’ series, described on Amazon as “irresistibly romantic stories about finding love when and where you least expect it.”
This story is the highest-rated of the entire series, which is why I saved it for last. And had it not been for a couple of poor writing choices in the second half, it might actually have ended as my favourite story of this Amazon Originals collection. However, that honour stays with Abby Jimenez’s story, ‘Worst Wingman Ever.’
Woohoos:
😍 The two main characters (C and T) and their personalities, especially in the first half – really sweet.
😍 Yet again, the story begins on Valentine’s day, which is common to the entire collection. But it doesn’t stick to only one Valentine’s Day, and lasts for more than a decade. So we can actually see the development of the connection between our two young leads.
😍 As C & T are just in their teens when the story begins, there is a YA-ish feel at the start. But we see the growth in their age and behaviour over the years.
😍 I simply love the epistolary format, and this story uses it excellently through those emails, which sound like actual conversations.
😍 The second half introduces the first-person POVs for the two characters. From this point, the story switches between emails and regular textual prose. It handles the back-and-forth quite well.
😍 As the connection begins through emails and continues for more than ten years, there is no insta love, nor any gushing over the physical attractiveness of the other, at least in the first half.
😍 This is the longest story of the collection at 101 pages, but it is also the quickest to read as a lot of the page count is because of the email headers. The pacing is nice and smooth.
😍 The ending was sweet, and the epilogue, even cuter.
IDKs:
🤔 While I liked even the non-email content, I wish it had been written in third-person. The first person sounds somewhat similar across the two characters, and as the emails also are in first person (obviously), keeping track of who was speaking gets confusing at times.
🤔 A few too many coincidences in the second half. I would have seen a few coming, considering the genre. But it goes too farfetched for the rest.
🤔 The first revelation when one character gets to know who the other is, is written excellently. However, the other reveal, when the second character learns their email pal’s identity, is a bit disappointing as it doesn’t include the reaction to the news.
Mehs:
🙄 The innuendo in the second half wasn't warranted at all and spoiled what could have been a sweet and cosy love story. If the content had been warranted by the plot, I wouldn’t have said anything. But there are no steamy scenes in the story and the innuendo just comes from someone propositioning someone else. There’s a way of making such scenes sound sexy without using vulgar phrases like ‘You give such good dick.” 🤢 Adding to the nonsense is T’s realisation about how she has never had a great lover so far, with her epiphany being a result of overhearing the above line being said to C. Oh boy!
🙄 As the first half contains only emails, we have no clue what the characters look like. However, once the characters meet, the story overcompensates on this, and we get an overdose of the hotness of the characters. (For some reason, both seem obsessed with secretly admiring the lips of the other!) I might have admired the story more had it made at least one characters gawky or average-looking and this not affecting their bond.
All in all, I truly enjoyed the epistolary part of the story. But the non-email content needed a bit more tweaking and a little less innuendo. This was well on its way to earning 4.5 stars, but the second half messed up. Regardless, both my main issues stem from my personal reading preferences, so they won't bother most romance readers.
Recommended to those who enjoy epistolary romances and are more forgiving of “dirty talk” and repeated references to “plush lips”.
This standalone story is a part of the ‘The Improbable Meet-Cute’ collection, and is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers.
Note: Other reviews reveal that the audiobook narrators read every single part from the email headers. Considering how many emails are there in this book, I definitely wouldn’t recommend the audio version as it might be annoying to hear the sender-receiver-date info again and again.
Comments
Post a Comment