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Roller Derby Romance #4
Knock Me Down
When Tara becomes the captain of Monstrous Regiment, her roller derby team, she is determined to do absolutely everything right. She’ll make sure the team trains not only hard, but intelligently. It’s her job to get them strong, tight, and skilled.
It’s also her job to fill the audience so that the derby league can continue to run. When a reporter, Val, calls offering to do a story on the team, Tara jumps at the chance for free advertising. From their phone conversations, she knows Val is sassy and smart. She doesn’t expect her to be so gorgeous.
Tara is afraid of giving in to her feelings—Val is her complete opposite, flitting from job to job and refusing to worry about such petty things as deadlines and schedules. And she has the team to focus on. But Tara didn’t get where she is by hiding in the shadows. Can she step up, bare her heart, and get everything she’s ever dreamed of—or are all her efforts doomed to fail?
It’s also her job to fill the audience so that the derby league can continue to run. When a reporter, Val, calls offering to do a story on the team, Tara jumps at the chance for free advertising. From their phone conversations, she knows Val is sassy and smart. She doesn’t expect her to be so gorgeous.
Tara is afraid of giving in to her feelings—Val is her complete opposite, flitting from job to job and refusing to worry about such petty things as deadlines and schedules. And she has the team to focus on. But Tara didn’t get where she is by hiding in the shadows. Can she step up, bare her heart, and get everything she’s ever dreamed of—or are all her efforts doomed to fail?
274 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 28, 2017
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April 4, 2023
This book is Not Fun, sorry. Kinda sucks that it isn't fun, frankly. (NSFW warning, oh boy)
For whatever inexplicable reason, there are two entire roller-derby romances featuring trans leads. Why? Who knows, roller-derby feels like sort of a boomer (gen x) pursuit. But here we are, back in 2016, there was Roller Girl by Vanessa North and in 2017 this, Knock Me Down by Diana Morland.
Morland is the only returning customer to the Trans Women-Loving-Women romance list; every other author thus far (Lily Seabrooke, Chloe Keto, Rae D Magdon, M.A. Hinkle, Raquel De Leon, Vanessa North, Erik Schubach, Suzanne Clay, Chelsea M Cameron) seems to treat it as a one-and-done thing, as far as I know. It's weird, but oh well, because Diana Morland is back to bring us another tale of not being cis and being a lesbian, after her earlier (and pretty bad) book Lifetime Between Us.
In that book Maria was a pretty damn boring protagonist; Lifetime had other issues, but Maria was what has pretty much become the stereotype for trans women in romance: waifish, stereotypically and normatively attractive, meek and shy as all fuck with no ability to stand up for herself, pretty deeply self-hating, full of internalised transphobia, and a total bottom. I haven't been able to figure out why EVERY trans dyke(and also trans bi-or-pan-sexual) in fiction is a bottom, every time, but I'll figure it out someday.
Tara stands in pretty stark contrast to that, which makes for a cool comparison game: she is tall as fuck, musclebound, black, has a giant fluffy afro, and is kind of a chad. A genuine top, even? We don't really get to see it beyond being told in the story, but Tara dates and fucks quite frequently, she's actually very popular with the ladies. It's wild how polar opposite she is to Maria, and it makes me wish more authors would write more trans leads. Please? It would be cool? I'm gay?
The plot of this one is basically that Tara is the newly-crowned captain of her roller derby team, and they're gonna compete in the nationals in a few months, so she has to train up her girls (coincidentally almost all gays) and such. She gets contacted by a reporter who wants to write articles about her team as they go through the season, and that's your lot.
Reporter lady is Val, heavily tattooed and five feet tall with "tiny hands" (whyyy) and and extremely slender build. It's not common to see size-difference-type stuff in sapphic fiction, like as in I've never seen it at all personally, what the hell. But yeah, Tara worries to herself that, regarding Val, "she might break her in bed." I was like, oh my god, damn. It is the five-foot versus six-foot meme made real, in a gay.
Disappointingly, it doesn't play out much anywhere else, though. Like, Tara does not suplex Val at any point, or recreate that one porn meme of the short lady pressed up on the wall? Nothing fun like that, their heights aren't often mentioned (outside of constant, weird references to Val's small hands) and actually the sex is mostly pretty tame. Except...
Okay, mask off, time to stop being fake pleasant. Why does this thing blow ass? The easiest problem is Val, who is pretty much a nothingburger of a person, despite being the one on the front cover. Presumably nobody could find anyone to model Tara... Part of the problem is that everything is from Tara's perspective, so mostly what we see is Tara pining for this weird flaky girl that only seems to want sex. Very romantic, right? Val doesn't even get that much dialogue (that isn't sexy sex flirting, anyway) so it's Tara who makes all the moves toward an emotionally invested relationship, with Val just content to fuck around and smash right till the end, wherein she reveals SHE WAS SCARED OF LOVE yeah okay, fine, whatever.
So the core relationship of this book isn't up to that much either, with Tara and Val basically having sex now and then up till 80%, when Tara decides to stop fucking around, which of course makes Val bolt, basically. Tara and Val seem actively disinterested in eachother, outside of being Hot People, and it's just baffling. Their first date is like, Val's eyes are glazing over as Tara talks about her job (an economist), and Tara is all put off by Val's frequent-mover lifestyle and lack of post-secondary education, ("Tara couldn't imagine education not being for someone") the upper class privileged fucker. What do these two like about eachother? It never gets filled in, and so when Tara is sitting wondering why she's so in love with Val despite them being polar opposites in many ways, I'm wondering too! Bitch, I have no clue! These details never really get filled in, so their conflict about having a serious relationship feels silly, and their final declaration of love feels super hollow. We're pretty much just TOLD that Tara loves Val, and I found it pretty annoying, and since the plot only covers the derby team training for the season, and not the season itself, there isn't really much "plot" to pull us along otherwise.
I've used the word "sex" at least five times more than usual so far, though, and that's because... oh god, man, fuck, oh no.
Let's establish some context: there are pretty much two kinds of Sex® in these books, near as I can tell. The first is pretty much functionally indistinguishable from sex between two cis people, because it involves two women, with vaginas. You'll get a call out for LUBRICANT, which must be a legal requirement because it happens EVERY TIME, but otherwise it is very normal. Roller Girl(North), Fake It(Seabrooke), Knowing Her(de Leon) all feature this. Nothing to see here, all is well.
The second is *the other kind.* You know. Involving less vag than usually associated with said.
It must be a brave and weird new world for the authors writing these, because there's pretty much no blueprint. I wasn't really fond of how Tengoku and Double Exposure handled their girlcocks, because y'know, it felt awkward. When Lacey has to run and change underwear because, I guess, neither her nor Anna thought ahead about the whole nut thing? That felt kind of awkward and bad, like it totally broke the flow of the scene for a paragraph, wasn't a fan. Similarly, Tengoku is the book that taught me that I NEVER want to have to think about contraceptives in my wlw fiction. Like, if condoms were involved maybe that'd be fine, safe sex is cool, but I am ick-ing on the whole, conception/pregnancy thing. No Thanks; this feeling of mine also applies to all-cis stuff like Miracles by Serena J Bishop.
I didn't really feel the need to bully those books over it, though, and I still don't. Partly, that's because I don't even know what good trans sex would even look like? It's not like anyone's written any, at least in a book. (Maybe there's a cool itch.io game with awesome gay trans sex?) Plus, it just feels mean. I do know what bad trans sex looks like, though.
I feel slightly rude about Knock Me Down because its sex scenes are garbage. Initially I was pretty sure we weren't even gonna have any, and this would be a sweet romance! I mean, when the topic comes up in Lifetime, and Erica says she wants to have sex with Maria, the bitch literally responds "What? No, you don't" and I fall off my seat laughing every time. Plus, the sex Diana Morland wrote in The Naga's Prey was reaaally lame and boring, for literally a sexy snek book. No coiling by nagas, very sad.
Suffice it to say I was kind of surprised when early on, Tara lets off steam by literally jerking off in the shower about it. Only two fingers, wild! But mostly, I have issues with how the book handles its Trans™ garbage relevant to this:
"Does that mean you can fuck me like a guy would?"
I mean, fuck off with this. 'Like a guy would'... I was disappointed and deeply displeased. Knock Me Down doesn't always feel like it's just transplanting straight sex, but sometimes it kind of does. Mainly, the bedroom is a series of really boring, briefly described blowjobs and such. Quite thankfully there's no mentions of the ol' girlcum, at all, but... Okay, obviously Your Mileage May Vary quite widely with this subject, and yes people have sex in all kinds of different ways, but it kind of bugged me that you could almost just swap Tara for a random dude and the scenes wouldn't change. I've read in various places that post-hormone replacement, trans female anatomy responds much better to pressure and vibration than boring ol' strokes. I'd like to see that in a book sometime. Get out the old Hitachi (now Vibratex!) Magic Wand? Maybe some butt-stuff, anything? But no, Knock Me Down's sex is plain and annoying and kind of uncomfortable.
'Plain and annoying' wouldn't be enough ammo to call it terrible, but it has much more. It takes some time out to discuss the intricacies of the female penis, but proceeds to not adhere to them at all. Like, Tara describes herself as "not really getting erections anymore", direct wording, fuck "erections" is so clinical sounding. But then also, in the same line, we get to know that her pants are getting "uncomfortably tight"? And, one time after a second round of sex, she reflects that she was "surprised she could get it up again so quickly". Like, book, are you paying any attention? It feels like the book wants it both ways, for some reason. If it had *either* the obligatory hormone-withering and the requisite neat ways of having sex, that'd be cool, OR it could simply be that Tara has done 'maintenance' over time, and everything down there still works as advertised. The latter seems to be true, since it's the usual "my dick is diamonds" beat anyway. Ghhgh.
Does that seem like a lot of Trans Bullshit when the book is supposed to be having fun sex? Yeah, it is. You have to stop and hear about how much hormones changed Tara's nipples or whatever, and other various things, often during sex. I like (despise) the bit where Tara observes that Val is very enthusiastic and that "even other trans women were usually uncomfortable with a woman's penis". Such a loaded line, F in the chat for other-trans-women, I guess. Dunno why that would be, or if it would be. Sigh.
Actually though, one of the book's absolute worst gaffes is when Val asks this little zinger one time, after they fuck:
"Well... Why not have the surgery? I'm just curious."
Potential reasons Tara might not have had The® Surgery™:
- financial/funding problems
- government bullshit (I swear no government should ever have any right to dictate anything regarding anyone's body)
- unrelated health issues that make it a challenge or impossible
- could be working and saving up for it right this moment
- Or, she doesn't fucking want to??? None of your business???
I cannot possibly think of a worse, more fucking insensitive question to ask. And right after sex!!! What the fuck is that supposed to imply? The answer from Tara, because the book thinks this is a fine question, ends up being that recovery time would be too long for roller derby basically. But man... Then Tara thinks "but in a perfect world, she wouldn't need it, because she would have been born with a body that matched her brain." I ain't down for this trans negative, cis normative bullshit, and I think that is the core of my issues with it. Tara (or at least the narration surrounding her) is still a little bit self-hatey at the core, and it even manages to pervade intimate scenes. Terrible!
But wait, there's even less! Yes, it can get worse: Knock Me Down also has PERFECT TEETH! I was pretty sure that, most times, with regards to any oral sex, a handy rule of thumb is to NEVER use teeth. They feel like fingernails or something, and with all the juddery, jerky movements during sex there's a better than zero chance that if something is in your mouth, you might bite it off by accident. Seems like a bad idea; I thought this was common wisdom. And yet:
"She didn't even touch Tara's dick with her hands, just took it into her mouth in one hard swallow, then raked it from base nearly to tip with her teeth."
Like... I guess this is probably someone's fetish, and fair play, but... I dunno, *I* sure as shit do not want teeth anywhere near *my* bits, you feel? I was like Wow, I sure hope Val doesn't have a gag reflex anymore. I mean, that would hurt! There's usually a lot of little movements going on during sex that would make maintaining a just-barely grip on someone's cock WITH TEETH kind of difficult, right?
For me, this was bad to worse. This book was already weird and terrible, and it got out the teeth blowjob. Incredible. Seriously, why do books featuring trans women's natal anatomy have such fuckin' cisnormative sex in them, all the time? Don't answer that.
...Man, I just spent like, a whole page talking about Fucking Trans Women. That was a lot. Anyway...
Knock Me Down is pretty much a terrible disappointment. Tara is such a unique character to squander on such a stupid, badly paced, weird and discomforting book. Her towering, muscular form just straight up deserved better. It's probably a little worse than Lifetime Between Us, but in totally different ways. There's a part of me that still doesn't want to be mean to it, but I really did not have any fun at all with this one. Between its stupid, empty, under-baked and poorly-plotted romance, and painful issues with trans representation, how could I? As the eleventh, and as far as I know final addition to the list of trans sapphic romances, it's possibly the worst. What I'm saying is that I basically hated it. Just downright unpleasant.
(If you know of any other trans sapphic romances that I haven't read please hit me up so I can read them)
For whatever inexplicable reason, there are two entire roller-derby romances featuring trans leads. Why? Who knows, roller-derby feels like sort of a boomer (gen x) pursuit. But here we are, back in 2016, there was Roller Girl by Vanessa North and in 2017 this, Knock Me Down by Diana Morland.
Morland is the only returning customer to the Trans Women-Loving-Women romance list; every other author thus far (Lily Seabrooke, Chloe Keto, Rae D Magdon, M.A. Hinkle, Raquel De Leon, Vanessa North, Erik Schubach, Suzanne Clay, Chelsea M Cameron) seems to treat it as a one-and-done thing, as far as I know. It's weird, but oh well, because Diana Morland is back to bring us another tale of not being cis and being a lesbian, after her earlier (and pretty bad) book Lifetime Between Us.
In that book Maria was a pretty damn boring protagonist; Lifetime had other issues, but Maria was what has pretty much become the stereotype for trans women in romance: waifish, stereotypically and normatively attractive, meek and shy as all fuck with no ability to stand up for herself, pretty deeply self-hating, full of internalised transphobia, and a total bottom. I haven't been able to figure out why EVERY trans dyke(and also trans bi-or-pan-sexual) in fiction is a bottom, every time, but I'll figure it out someday.
Tara stands in pretty stark contrast to that, which makes for a cool comparison game: she is tall as fuck, musclebound, black, has a giant fluffy afro, and is kind of a chad. A genuine top, even? We don't really get to see it beyond being told in the story, but Tara dates and fucks quite frequently, she's actually very popular with the ladies. It's wild how polar opposite she is to Maria, and it makes me wish more authors would write more trans leads. Please? It would be cool? I'm gay?
The plot of this one is basically that Tara is the newly-crowned captain of her roller derby team, and they're gonna compete in the nationals in a few months, so she has to train up her girls (coincidentally almost all gays) and such. She gets contacted by a reporter who wants to write articles about her team as they go through the season, and that's your lot.
Reporter lady is Val, heavily tattooed and five feet tall with "tiny hands" (whyyy) and and extremely slender build. It's not common to see size-difference-type stuff in sapphic fiction, like as in I've never seen it at all personally, what the hell. But yeah, Tara worries to herself that, regarding Val, "she might break her in bed." I was like, oh my god, damn. It is the five-foot versus six-foot meme made real, in a gay.
Disappointingly, it doesn't play out much anywhere else, though. Like, Tara does not suplex Val at any point, or recreate that one porn meme of the short lady pressed up on the wall? Nothing fun like that, their heights aren't often mentioned (outside of constant, weird references to Val's small hands) and actually the sex is mostly pretty tame. Except...
Okay, mask off, time to stop being fake pleasant. Why does this thing blow ass? The easiest problem is Val, who is pretty much a nothingburger of a person, despite being the one on the front cover. Presumably nobody could find anyone to model Tara... Part of the problem is that everything is from Tara's perspective, so mostly what we see is Tara pining for this weird flaky girl that only seems to want sex. Very romantic, right? Val doesn't even get that much dialogue (that isn't sexy sex flirting, anyway) so it's Tara who makes all the moves toward an emotionally invested relationship, with Val just content to fuck around and smash right till the end, wherein she reveals SHE WAS SCARED OF LOVE yeah okay, fine, whatever.
So the core relationship of this book isn't up to that much either, with Tara and Val basically having sex now and then up till 80%, when Tara decides to stop fucking around, which of course makes Val bolt, basically. Tara and Val seem actively disinterested in eachother, outside of being Hot People, and it's just baffling. Their first date is like, Val's eyes are glazing over as Tara talks about her job (an economist), and Tara is all put off by Val's frequent-mover lifestyle and lack of post-secondary education, ("Tara couldn't imagine education not being for someone") the upper class privileged fucker. What do these two like about eachother? It never gets filled in, and so when Tara is sitting wondering why she's so in love with Val despite them being polar opposites in many ways, I'm wondering too! Bitch, I have no clue! These details never really get filled in, so their conflict about having a serious relationship feels silly, and their final declaration of love feels super hollow. We're pretty much just TOLD that Tara loves Val, and I found it pretty annoying, and since the plot only covers the derby team training for the season, and not the season itself, there isn't really much "plot" to pull us along otherwise.
I've used the word "sex" at least five times more than usual so far, though, and that's because... oh god, man, fuck, oh no.
Let's establish some context: there are pretty much two kinds of Sex® in these books, near as I can tell. The first is pretty much functionally indistinguishable from sex between two cis people, because it involves two women, with vaginas. You'll get a call out for LUBRICANT, which must be a legal requirement because it happens EVERY TIME, but otherwise it is very normal. Roller Girl(North), Fake It(Seabrooke), Knowing Her(de Leon) all feature this. Nothing to see here, all is well.
The second is *the other kind.* You know. Involving less vag than usually associated with said.
It must be a brave and weird new world for the authors writing these, because there's pretty much no blueprint. I wasn't really fond of how Tengoku and Double Exposure handled their girlcocks, because y'know, it felt awkward. When Lacey has to run and change underwear because, I guess, neither her nor Anna thought ahead about the whole nut thing? That felt kind of awkward and bad, like it totally broke the flow of the scene for a paragraph, wasn't a fan. Similarly, Tengoku is the book that taught me that I NEVER want to have to think about contraceptives in my wlw fiction. Like, if condoms were involved maybe that'd be fine, safe sex is cool, but I am ick-ing on the whole, conception/pregnancy thing. No Thanks; this feeling of mine also applies to all-cis stuff like Miracles by Serena J Bishop.
I didn't really feel the need to bully those books over it, though, and I still don't. Partly, that's because I don't even know what good trans sex would even look like? It's not like anyone's written any, at least in a book. (Maybe there's a cool itch.io game with awesome gay trans sex?) Plus, it just feels mean. I do know what bad trans sex looks like, though.
I feel slightly rude about Knock Me Down because its sex scenes are garbage. Initially I was pretty sure we weren't even gonna have any, and this would be a sweet romance! I mean, when the topic comes up in Lifetime, and Erica says she wants to have sex with Maria, the bitch literally responds "What? No, you don't" and I fall off my seat laughing every time. Plus, the sex Diana Morland wrote in The Naga's Prey was reaaally lame and boring, for literally a sexy snek book. No coiling by nagas, very sad.
Suffice it to say I was kind of surprised when early on, Tara lets off steam by literally jerking off in the shower about it. Only two fingers, wild! But mostly, I have issues with how the book handles its Trans™ garbage relevant to this:
"Does that mean you can fuck me like a guy would?"
I mean, fuck off with this. 'Like a guy would'... I was disappointed and deeply displeased. Knock Me Down doesn't always feel like it's just transplanting straight sex, but sometimes it kind of does. Mainly, the bedroom is a series of really boring, briefly described blowjobs and such. Quite thankfully there's no mentions of the ol' girlcum, at all, but... Okay, obviously Your Mileage May Vary quite widely with this subject, and yes people have sex in all kinds of different ways, but it kind of bugged me that you could almost just swap Tara for a random dude and the scenes wouldn't change. I've read in various places that post-hormone replacement, trans female anatomy responds much better to pressure and vibration than boring ol' strokes. I'd like to see that in a book sometime. Get out the old Hitachi (now Vibratex!) Magic Wand? Maybe some butt-stuff, anything? But no, Knock Me Down's sex is plain and annoying and kind of uncomfortable.
'Plain and annoying' wouldn't be enough ammo to call it terrible, but it has much more. It takes some time out to discuss the intricacies of the female penis, but proceeds to not adhere to them at all. Like, Tara describes herself as "not really getting erections anymore", direct wording, fuck "erections" is so clinical sounding. But then also, in the same line, we get to know that her pants are getting "uncomfortably tight"? And, one time after a second round of sex, she reflects that she was "surprised she could get it up again so quickly". Like, book, are you paying any attention? It feels like the book wants it both ways, for some reason. If it had *either* the obligatory hormone-withering and the requisite neat ways of having sex, that'd be cool, OR it could simply be that Tara has done 'maintenance' over time, and everything down there still works as advertised. The latter seems to be true, since it's the usual "my dick is diamonds" beat anyway. Ghhgh.
Does that seem like a lot of Trans Bullshit when the book is supposed to be having fun sex? Yeah, it is. You have to stop and hear about how much hormones changed Tara's nipples or whatever, and other various things, often during sex. I like (despise) the bit where Tara observes that Val is very enthusiastic and that "even other trans women were usually uncomfortable with a woman's penis". Such a loaded line, F in the chat for other-trans-women, I guess. Dunno why that would be, or if it would be. Sigh.
Actually though, one of the book's absolute worst gaffes is when Val asks this little zinger one time, after they fuck:
"Well... Why not have the surgery? I'm just curious."
Potential reasons Tara might not have had The® Surgery™:
- financial/funding problems
- government bullshit (I swear no government should ever have any right to dictate anything regarding anyone's body)
- unrelated health issues that make it a challenge or impossible
- could be working and saving up for it right this moment
- Or, she doesn't fucking want to??? None of your business???
I cannot possibly think of a worse, more fucking insensitive question to ask. And right after sex!!! What the fuck is that supposed to imply? The answer from Tara, because the book thinks this is a fine question, ends up being that recovery time would be too long for roller derby basically. But man... Then Tara thinks "but in a perfect world, she wouldn't need it, because she would have been born with a body that matched her brain." I ain't down for this trans negative, cis normative bullshit, and I think that is the core of my issues with it. Tara (or at least the narration surrounding her) is still a little bit self-hatey at the core, and it even manages to pervade intimate scenes. Terrible!
But wait, there's even less! Yes, it can get worse: Knock Me Down also has PERFECT TEETH! I was pretty sure that, most times, with regards to any oral sex, a handy rule of thumb is to NEVER use teeth. They feel like fingernails or something, and with all the juddery, jerky movements during sex there's a better than zero chance that if something is in your mouth, you might bite it off by accident. Seems like a bad idea; I thought this was common wisdom. And yet:
"She didn't even touch Tara's dick with her hands, just took it into her mouth in one hard swallow, then raked it from base nearly to tip with her teeth."
Like... I guess this is probably someone's fetish, and fair play, but... I dunno, *I* sure as shit do not want teeth anywhere near *my* bits, you feel? I was like Wow, I sure hope Val doesn't have a gag reflex anymore. I mean, that would hurt! There's usually a lot of little movements going on during sex that would make maintaining a just-barely grip on someone's cock WITH TEETH kind of difficult, right?
For me, this was bad to worse. This book was already weird and terrible, and it got out the teeth blowjob. Incredible. Seriously, why do books featuring trans women's natal anatomy have such fuckin' cisnormative sex in them, all the time? Don't answer that.
...Man, I just spent like, a whole page talking about Fucking Trans Women. That was a lot. Anyway...
Knock Me Down is pretty much a terrible disappointment. Tara is such a unique character to squander on such a stupid, badly paced, weird and discomforting book. Her towering, muscular form just straight up deserved better. It's probably a little worse than Lifetime Between Us, but in totally different ways. There's a part of me that still doesn't want to be mean to it, but I really did not have any fun at all with this one. Between its stupid, empty, under-baked and poorly-plotted romance, and painful issues with trans representation, how could I? As the eleventh, and as far as I know final addition to the list of trans sapphic romances, it's possibly the worst. What I'm saying is that I basically hated it. Just downright unpleasant.
(If you know of any other trans sapphic romances that I haven't read please hit me up so I can read them)
January 12, 2019
And I've reached the end of the series. (For now...please can Leya Out have a book?)
-Tara, the protagonist of the book, is a trans WOC, which I'm thrilled about—at most I've read one other romance with a trans lead, and POC leads are also depressingly rare. I could have used an earlier mention that Tara was black (I thought I'd seen something about that in an earlier book, but then I wasn't positive until 173 pages into this book, when 'her dark skin and huge, fluffy Afro' are mentioned), and it's disappointing that Val seems to be the character on the cover (Val, who can barely stay vertical on skates! Which I suppose would explain why she's lying down on the cover, but still...), but overall this is a win.
-One thing that gave me pause: there's almost no mention of transphobia or racism, or of Tara facing challenges that a (white) ciswoman wouldn't. There's a best friend from college who dropped her, and there's a hint of her family not being on board, but neither of those is followed up on. She's muscular, hasn't had any surgery, and, when she goes to a yoga class, is 'at least six inches taller than any of the other women' (173), but passing is never a concern (for problems with the idea of passing, see Redefining Realness). She has to come out to dates, but it doesn't sound like that's been much of a concern either. ('Tara was rarely rejected by dates when they found out she was transgender, but it had happened, and it was never fun.' (142)
Part of me is bothered by this because (although I'm no expert) this feels unrealistic. Too easy? We haven't come this far yet. Another part of me thinks, well, in addition to the dearth of trans women in romance, there's a dearth of stories in which trans women can just...go about their lives. Every romance novel is on some level a fantasy, and in this case part of the fantasy is, well, all of the above.
-Definitely recognisable as one of the books of the series, from an excess of grinning (god but these characters' cheeks are getting a workout) to a substitution of a conventional lesbian UHaul plot for the conventional het romance proposal plot. By this I mean that in all four books of the series, the romance moves them straight towards cohabitation. This worked for me in the first two books, but in the third it felt questionable (Shayna had barely agreed to spend the night before they decided to live together), and in this one it just straight-up doesn't make sense—they barely manage to have one successful date, decide that it would be too soon for Val to move into Tara's one-bedroom flat...so obviously it makes more sense to start looking for a bigger place to rent, or hell, why not? A place to buy. Because logic.
-I still love the roller derby angle. This book pushes the team through the end of the off season and into the next season, and all the while Tara is finding her footing as team captain. The matches in these books tend to be a lot closer in points than any real-life match I've ever seen, but in terms of tension, it makes sense. I really want this series to continue.
-Tara, the protagonist of the book, is a trans WOC, which I'm thrilled about—at most I've read one other romance with a trans lead, and POC leads are also depressingly rare. I could have used an earlier mention that Tara was black (I thought I'd seen something about that in an earlier book, but then I wasn't positive until 173 pages into this book, when 'her dark skin and huge, fluffy Afro' are mentioned), and it's disappointing that Val seems to be the character on the cover (Val, who can barely stay vertical on skates! Which I suppose would explain why she's lying down on the cover, but still...), but overall this is a win.
-One thing that gave me pause: there's almost no mention of transphobia or racism, or of Tara facing challenges that a (white) ciswoman wouldn't. There's a best friend from college who dropped her, and there's a hint of her family not being on board, but neither of those is followed up on. She's muscular, hasn't had any surgery, and, when she goes to a yoga class, is 'at least six inches taller than any of the other women' (173), but passing is never a concern (for problems with the idea of passing, see Redefining Realness). She has to come out to dates, but it doesn't sound like that's been much of a concern either. ('Tara was rarely rejected by dates when they found out she was transgender, but it had happened, and it was never fun.' (142)
Part of me is bothered by this because (although I'm no expert) this feels unrealistic. Too easy? We haven't come this far yet. Another part of me thinks, well, in addition to the dearth of trans women in romance, there's a dearth of stories in which trans women can just...go about their lives. Every romance novel is on some level a fantasy, and in this case part of the fantasy is, well, all of the above.
-Definitely recognisable as one of the books of the series, from an excess of grinning (god but these characters' cheeks are getting a workout) to a substitution of a conventional lesbian UHaul plot for the conventional het romance proposal plot. By this I mean that in all four books of the series, the romance moves them straight towards cohabitation. This worked for me in the first two books, but in the third it felt questionable (Shayna had barely agreed to spend the night before they decided to live together), and in this one it just straight-up doesn't make sense—they barely manage to have one successful date, decide that it would be too soon for Val to move into Tara's one-bedroom flat...so obviously it makes more sense to start looking for a bigger place to rent, or hell, why not? A place to buy. Because logic.
-I still love the roller derby angle. This book pushes the team through the end of the off season and into the next season, and all the while Tara is finding her footing as team captain. The matches in these books tend to be a lot closer in points than any real-life match I've ever seen, but in terms of tension, it makes sense. I really want this series to continue.
November 18, 2024
So, I couldn't help but like it, even going into it with less than positive expectations.
It was rushed, I think we could have done with a good 40 pages more of development before the happy ending but it was also fairly realistic for how challenging a relationship could be between two very different personalities.
The trans stuff ranged from pretty damn decent and resonating to god awful. "Does this mean you'll fuck me like a man?" "Why not get the Surgery?" yikes. But honestly the fact that it featured a pre-op non-penetration trans dyke is just like fucking gold dust. And quite honestly the book handles her fucking great as often as it totally misses the spot. Some specific stuff that I related to so fucking well that I can't believe the author just stumbled into, surely she did her research. Which I respect and appreciate. I'll even give the benefit of the doubt that 80% of the weird remarks came from a very brash, tactless character.
Tall-short dynamic. Love it.
Black trans woman for the main character, not seen that before I think ever, even cis black lesbians barely get a look in this kind of book so that was really cool.
The text generally just flows really nicely, it's a pleasurable read and it has lots of peppy banter and engaging dialogue. It's just a very nicely constructed book.
The romance/relationship/whatever was really comepelling. It was smouldering and kind of awkward at times which rings true to real life ime. I really liked both characters and they both had very admirable traits and some not so admirable traits.
All in all I had a really good time reading it and I think that's what matters the most in a personal review. If Goodreads had the extra layers of nuance for ratings it'd be closer to a 3 than a 4 but what the hell.
Also thanks to Ash for talking with me about the book! There's no one I can discuss lesbian romances like this with like I can with you dear. ^_^
It was rushed, I think we could have done with a good 40 pages more of development before the happy ending but it was also fairly realistic for how challenging a relationship could be between two very different personalities.
The trans stuff ranged from pretty damn decent and resonating to god awful. "Does this mean you'll fuck me like a man?" "Why not get the Surgery?" yikes. But honestly the fact that it featured a pre-op non-penetration trans dyke is just like fucking gold dust. And quite honestly the book handles her fucking great as often as it totally misses the spot. Some specific stuff that I related to so fucking well that I can't believe the author just stumbled into, surely she did her research. Which I respect and appreciate. I'll even give the benefit of the doubt that 80% of the weird remarks came from a very brash, tactless character.
Tall-short dynamic. Love it.
Black trans woman for the main character, not seen that before I think ever, even cis black lesbians barely get a look in this kind of book so that was really cool.
The text generally just flows really nicely, it's a pleasurable read and it has lots of peppy banter and engaging dialogue. It's just a very nicely constructed book.
The romance/relationship/whatever was really comepelling. It was smouldering and kind of awkward at times which rings true to real life ime. I really liked both characters and they both had very admirable traits and some not so admirable traits.
All in all I had a really good time reading it and I think that's what matters the most in a personal review. If Goodreads had the extra layers of nuance for ratings it'd be closer to a 3 than a 4 but what the hell.
Also thanks to Ash for talking with me about the book! There's no one I can discuss lesbian romances like this with like I can with you dear. ^_^
May 13, 2020
Good book
An entertaining & enjoyable story with some intriguing & interesting likeable characters, several hot scenes & an easily read book.
An entertaining & enjoyable story with some intriguing & interesting likeable characters, several hot scenes & an easily read book.
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