Jacob’s review of When Gracie Met The Grump > Likes and Comments

Ooohh Jacob your review gives me hope! I forced myself through the first 45% and now it seems the pacing is picking up a bit, and there are some dialogues as well 😄

Drache wrote: "Ooohh Jacob your review gives me hope! I forced myself through the first 45% and now it seems the pacing is picking up a bit, and there are some dialogues as well 😄"

Once they got to the cabins, I was good. It was a slog to get there though.

Again, when you give a book 5 stars, it's a 10 for rhe real of us...it was fabulous.

Karen wrote: "Again, when you give a book 5 stars, it's a 10 for rhe real of us...it was fabulous."

I'm so glad you liked it! We're on outlier on this one, so it's good to have company. Really, I can't fault those who hung up on the beginning and never recovered. Or even those who didn't feel like the eventual developments were strong enough. They worked for me, but I can see that they're borderline in many ways..

This is a book you have to read with an open mind...it's not MZ norm to write about Fantasy...but, true to MZs writing style, this falls in line with the rest...glad it was changed up...and loved it. Your points or dead on...and if an author can use DUCK as many times in appropriate situations, I'll keep reading. Thank you for your continual honest reviews.

Karen wrote: "This is a book you have to read with an open mind...it's not MZ norm to write about Fantasy...but, true to MZs writing style, this falls in line with the rest...glad it was changed up...and loved it. Your points or dead on...and if an author can use DUCK as many times in appropriate situations, I'll keep reading. Thank you for your continual honest reviews."

You're welcome, Karen. I'm glad it worked out for you! 😅

I agree with Karen, your 5-Stars carry a lot of weight with me. What other MZ books would you recommend?

James wrote: "I agree with Karen, your 5-Stars carry a lot of weight with me. What other MZ books would you recommend?"

Aw! Thanks! My only other MZ five-star is Kulti. Which I can definitely recommend. From there, you get a lot that are pretty good, but the reasons vary...

This is the review I needed to maybe try to get back into it. I’m at like the 35% point and it’s the worst, most boring book ever. I just love Mariana Zapata though and I want to like this book, so if you say it gets better, I’m willing to continue.

Megan wrote: "This is the review I needed to maybe try to get back into it. I’m at like the 35% point and it’s the worst, most boring book ever. I just love Mariana Zapata though and I want to like this book, so..."

I really hope it works out. I’d hate to be luring you to disappointment…

Great review! I love this author and her slow-burn books. I haven't picked this one up yet, but I'm definitely going to.

Katyana wrote: "Great review! I love this author and her slow-burn books. I haven't picked this one up yet, but I'm definitely going to."

I hope you love it! Fan response has been split, so it isn’t a slam dunk.

Jacob, I just got through reading a bunch of negative reviews about this book and I'm hesitating to read this book. Especially because Hoopla doesn't have it. I just finally got around to reading Rhodes. Interesting that she's done two books in a row focusing on the grumpy trope that's a big deal these days in contemporary romance.

Kate wrote: "Jacob, I just got through reading a bunch of negative reviews about this book and I'm hesitating to read this book. Especially because Hoopla doesn't have it. I just finally got around to reading Rhodes. Interesting that she's done two books in a row focusing on the grumpy trope that's a big deal these days in contemporary romance."

She has kind of made a career out of grumpy leading men. I'm having a tough time thinking of one of hers that isn't a grumpy man... Maybe Wait for It?

Jacob, your grump observation is well taken. I agree with you completely that MZ has written a lot of grumpy male love interests (MLI)--I do no personally classify them as an MMC, a co-equal romance protagonist, since we never get their POV in any of her novels. I immediately think of Rhodes, Kulti, Dex, and Lucas (I haven't read When Gracie Met the Grump yet, but presumably there's definitely a grump MLI, since it's in the title). However, as I reflect on it for the first time right now, it seems to me that there have been some exceptions to her grump theme, because the main characteristic of a grump It seems to be that he is abrasively rude:

Dear Aaron: IMO, he is a Cinnamon Roll, especially in the scene when they first meet in person.

Rhythm, Chord and Malyknin: Sacha has a mellow, CR personality.

Lingus, to me, with its sweet-natured MLI, Robby, seems to lack any grump features. It offers a main romantic conflict that the FMC struggles to accept that adorable Robby is a sex worker who makes porn films.

I'm not sure I would consider The Wall of Winnipeg a grump story either. Aiden is definitely one of her "man of few words" MLIs, who has trouble expressing himself. And, from my perspective, he has a lot of characteristics of someone who is neurodiverse and on the autism spectrum. But in my opinion, he is never abrasively rude, just obliviously taking the FMC for granted, which makes him, inadvertently, obnoxiously ungrateful.

I thought Zac was the opposite of a grump in TWOWAM, and I really liked him. But I found the book dedicated to his romance, Hands Down, cringeworthy. In that book he seemed to get a personality transplant. It wasn't so much that he was rude, just that he seemed completely unlike the delightfully lively and friendly person he was presented as previously.

In The Best Thing (her only reunion romance?) the MLI blew it horribly in the backstory and had to win back the FMC, so he did not have the luxury of being a grump that the FMC feels a need to placate. Now that I consider that trope, it wouldn't be completely implausible to me to consider it a "reverse grump" story, with the FMC the grump in that story, due to her justifiable anger and resentment at the MLI's abandonment.

Wait for It is one of my favorite books by MZ, mainly because I'm a big fan of the romance trope of the FMC raising the kids of a dead sibling/friend. I really loved WFI when I first read it years ago, and I'm planning to reread it soon. To tell you the truth, I can't quite remember the story enough to say for sure if I would consider the MLI a grump. I didn't write a review the first time I read WFI, but I will definitely write one when I reread it.

As for From Lukov with Love, I'm thinking it is possible to assert that this is another "reverse grump" story. I really didn't like the FMC very much. Unlike the FMC in TBT, the source of her resentment is mostly professional envy, which is not a sympathetic trait. But the MLI, Lukov, isn't much better, in my view, with all his childish taunting of her. This is an "enemies to lovers" story, with both of them acting like infantile idiots. I never enjoy a romance when the main romantic conflict is that either the FMC, MMC, or both, are patronizingly rude, hostilely rude, and/or bully each other by playing pranks on each other.

Kate wrote: "the main characteristic of a grump It seems to be that he is abrasively rude:"

I agree with your detailed analysis in its particulars, but I'm not sure I'm on board with this premise. For an example, my favorite romance that I categorize as grumpy/sunshine is Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating. It has been a while since I read it, but I'm pretty sure Josh isn't rude. He's just really, really mellow and thus a contrast to Hazel's brand of sunshine. It's the polarizing opposites that attracts me to the dynamic, so I can do without the whole rude aspect that is sometimes present, but not necessary for the category.

Jacob, thanks for your reply. I am very intrigued that you have chosen, as a synonym for the jargonistic use of the term, "grumpy," by romance authors, which is become very popular in the past few years, the word, "mellow." This was a very popular adjective applied to themselves by USA, marijuana-stoned hippies in the '60s and early '70s, when I was young, and will probably always have an association, to me, for someone being very laid back and calm and basically anything but grumpy. (This is epitomized by the song, "Mellow Yellow" by Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan, that hit the top of the charts in 1966.) I also think of the standard dictionary definition for a mellow disposition: "easygoing, tolerant, amicable, amiable, warmhearted, sympathetic, good-natured, affable." In my mind, when thinking about the intentions of authors who use, "grumpy," to refer to the MMC, I also go to the basic dictionary definition of grumpy, "bad-tempered and irritable."

This discussion also brings to my mind the changing terminology for a romance MMC in the publishing business over the years. Decades ago there was the term, D&D (dark and dangerous or dark and deadly), for an extreme version of an Alpha. Which later evolved to, Alphahole, for readers who got tired of macho jerks who were often outright abusive of the FMC, to the point of sexual assault, which from the 70s up to most of the 80s was excused by the FMC's supposedly enjoying that. This, as I'm sure you know, as a fan of romance, is how the HR novels got the name, "bodice rippers." MMC's were excused for rape, because it was written off as intense seduction in a story that was nothing but "fantasy." A concept psychologically propped up by the bestselling book from 1973 by Nancy Friday, My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies, in which rape is described as a popular, innocuous sexual fantasy for many women, which allows them to let go and surrender to their own sexuality. Nobody was using terms like "trigger" back then.

Interestingly, though he could date rape the FMC in a HR, an MMC was not permitted to actually hit or punch the FMC, until we arrived to the era today of the popularizing, outside of pornography, of MMCs who introduce the FMC to BDSM, in which hitting is allowed, because it is ritualized as kinky sex.

These days, there are also outright criminal, anti-hero MMCs in bully romances, mafia romances, and motorcycle-club romances. So there's a certain portion of the romance genre that allows for what, using the old terminology, would be an extreme version of a D&D romance hero.

To me, personally, what some authors are currently calling, "grumpy," is a rather irritatingly cutesy term for an MMC who is a non-wealthy version of a type of of Alpha MMC, which has been extremely common in the Harlequin Presents line for over 40 years. The HP MMC is a tycoon who is one of the richest men in the world. He is emotionally hardened from years of duking it out in the elite business world, which is dominated by macho men who grant no mercy to the weak. And basic politeness and gentility are seen as weakness among his peers. Then he runs into the FMC, who, until the last 10 years or so in HP, was almost exclusively his extreme opposite, a young, virginal, beautiful, soft-hearted woman, who literally wouldn't harm the proverbial flea. She is almost always so sweet-natured that she has been a lifelong, codependent doormat to users and abusers, either family members, previous boyfriends, or people she works for. Before the MMC, her softness has been nothing but a personal liability. But somehow, through the transformative power of True Love, she becomes the Beauty who tames the Beast of an MMC, who is her soulmate.

To me, the latter description strongly fits the FMC and MMC in all of the Zapata books I've described above as having a "grumpy" male love interest, and exactly describes the romantic relationship in Rhodes.

I think "mellow" might have been a distraction. The key for me is the next sentence in my response "It's the polarizing opposites that attracts me to the dynamic". I like sunshine with a contrast. That's generally lumped into "grumpy" as an easy designation. At least in my personal lexicon. It's a fun dynamic for me. All the abuse tropes of the past not so much...

These well-thought out (new) comments come at an opportune time, as I am 60 percent through All Rhodes Lead Here. This is my third MZ book, so all the insight is helpful.

Jacob, that's an excellent point about romance novels which include a version of "opposites attract" (OA) which does not involve the MMC being rude, or even downright verbally abusive, toward the FMC. That is my preference as well for that trope. And you are no doubt quite correct that many authors are probably carelessly classifying every kind of OA as "grumpy/sunshine" these days, even if that is not accurate. A fun example of OA that I've read recently is What is Love? by Jen Comfort. The FMC and MMC are opposites in many different entertaining ways, which I talk about in my review. Some people may classify the MMC as "grumpy," but I do not personally see him that way. We also get to know him really well because, unlike Zapata, Comfort uses a traditional romance structure, with dual POV.

James, I just finished reading Rhodes and surprised myself by how much I liked it. I look forward to seeing your review.