TBR Challenge: ‘LEARNING CURVES’, by Ceillie Simkiss

The topic of this month is Holiday (any holiday!)

Published: 2018

Genre: contemporary

My Rating: 3 stars

This month we have to read a book about any holiday. This novella could be one of those, as the final part of it is a Christmas dinner with the family of one of the heroines.

This Lesbian romance tends towards fluffy and cute.

This novella reminded me of 'Knit one, girl two': two women meet, they become friends, and then, as soon as they start considering themselves as a couple, the story ends.

Elena is a law student. She is Puerto Rican, loves to cook, wants to be a family lawyer to help children, defines herself as a lesbian and is overweight.

On the other side, we have Cora, MBA student, who suffers ADHD, loves books and defines herself as romantic but asexual.

When Cora asks Elena for her notes of a class, Elena agrees and that is the beginning of a sweet friendship between these two young women. They share study sessions, dance under the snow, Cora helps Elena with the cooking and in the end, and there is kiss under the mistletoe that seals their intention to be a couple.

What I liked the most in this story is seeing a non-WASP culture. Family life, cuisine, how they celebrate Christmas –everything sounds very authentic.

There are Spanish words here and there and for once, it seems that the author knows how to write in Spanish, because she does it well. There’s only one misspelling, confusing porqué and por qué, but it is such a common mistake even among natives, that it can be excused and I would even say that it is a sign that that was written by someone who really speaks Spanish, because she makes such a common mistake.

I loved the food, OMG, what a desire to devour everything they cook! Because yes, we Hispanic people on both sides of the Atlantic ocean attach great importance to home-made food, –as do other people, like the French, Italians, Greeks, Hindus, ... in short, I believe that almost any civilized country is distinguished precisely by its richness and gastronomic variety.

On the romantic side, it sounded like a friends to lovers story… However, I am not sure, because Cora is asexual so I do not see much sex in the future of these two women. Therefore, this is a kind of fluffy, cute, and sweet story. It was very nice to read, but nothing that interested me too much.

My feminist self rebelled months ago at the idea of ​​talking about romantic LGBT when, in fact, it tends to be male/male romance only. That is when I said to myself ‘the girls do also fall in love, so let’s look for women's stories’. I got recommendations and I am reading some of them. Up to this moment, I found out that they are nice stories, but I have not fallen in love with any of them.

It could be that they tend to be —cute and fluffy. That is not the kind of story I love. Some books are good, and I enjoy them, in a lukewarm way, as happened with this one. But they are not my cup of tea. I do not enjoy paranormal or small town romances, so perhaps this is another kind of story I can read it but never love.

Alternatively, perhaps it is that the books that were suggested to me are not particularly good novels.

I have my doubts; do I give these stories three stars because of a sense of feminist duty? Because I do not want to hear that f/f, love stories are worse than m/m or f/m romances. Could it be that deep down in my heart, perhaps I could have DNF’s these stories, because after ten or twenty pages, they just do not interest me?

Anyway, I will keep trying, to see if I find an f/f romance less cute and more kickass.

It was interesting this guest post of the author in Nicole Field’s blog, Simkiss says that she is asexual and feels uncomfortable about sex being laid out on the page, though, I struggled to find contemporary romances that were sex-free or even friendly to asexual readers like me. There’s nothing wrong with steamy romances. It’s more that those books just weren’t right for me.

It is funny because perhaps that is precisely what happened to me, there is nothing wrong with cute stories. It is just that they are not right for me.