Reviews

To quote Hamilton : “You ever see somebody ruin their own life?//His poor wife.”

This was so bad in so many different ways that I don’t think I can even remember all of the things I flagged to myself while reading it. The flashback scenes where Greer is 16 and Ash is 26. The fact that a 26-year-old soldier is keeping emails from a 16-year-old girl who became obsessed with him after they kissed ONCE in the breast pocket of his uniform throughout his entire military service (sidebar: emails that 100% would have been on a DoD server and absolutely flagged based on their content).

The reader is somehow supposed to believe that this man loved the woman he was married to for five years despite the fact that every single time the characters talk about her they make sure to say that Ash was still obsessed with Greer EVEN THOUGH THEY MET WHEN SHE WAS 16 AND HE’S FANTASIZING ABOUT A 16-YEAR-OLD GIRL. I refuse to believe that this man ever loved his wife. He’s constantly saying that he loved his wife but every night after she went to bed he was jacking off to a five-year-old memory of kissing a 16-year-old girl. AND SHE JUST TURNED 16 THAT NIGHT!!

Also the reader is supposed to believe Greer is this ultra-alluring sensual woman but she’s just a very blonde wet noodle with no personality and absolutely no friends. Every other woman in this book is in competition for the men. Greer has no hobbies or interests beyond a couple mentions that she’s a professor (which only plays into the book maybe twice???). She is simply a green screen for the reader to project themselves onto and has absolutely zero agency from the moment the reader meets her. She has no personality and she tries to imply she’s grown up since she was sixteen by saying she’s embarrassed by the emails she sent Ash over the course of a year after kissing him but she’s not. And she is the exact same thought pattern at each point in the book. She is about as deep as a dog’s water bowl and it since the book is entirely told from her perspective it’s so boring. She has absolutely no thoughts or opinions of her own which makes her anything other than compelling and left me completely uninvested in the plot. She can’t even use her own god damn safe word even when she’s not enjoying the sex because she’s so spineless.

I also HATED how un-researched this plot felt. I understand that this is just a smutty romance book but this read like the author maybe read something somewhere once about conflict in the Balkans/Yugoslavia or maybe Chechnya and used that to base her international conflict/war on (the conflict in the book takes place somewhere between Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine and features a boat-based war crime despite the country being absolutely land-locked). None of the war flashbacks made any sense if the reader is to believe that American soldiers were fully boots on the ground involved. There is no way in hell a foreign dignitary (Morgan) would be allowed on the front lines of an active war-zone without an insane amount of prior intel and a security detail. Not only that she is able to go explore a church in a front lines village on her own on a whim with zero planning and no security guards, protection or even fucking body armor. This isn’t how war works.

I don’t know what war this author thinks the U.S is fighting but there is no way that a second lieutenant is making major battlefield decisions for an entire command/base lol. He’d be in charge of MAYBE 40 men but no where near the number of people the book implied Ash was in charge of. I don’t mind him being a war hero but just tell the reader he’s a war hero without going into explicit detail if you’re not willing to do any basic research on military history/strategy.

Not only was the military history poorly researched but there is also absolutely no way that two 35/36-year-old men with zero political experience (beyond being war heroes or whatever) would be able to successfully mount a THIRD-PARTY PRESIDENTIAL TICKET and somehow win the election. I’m sorry but no way. Like absolutely no fucking way. I don’t care how many political advisers you have there is no possibility that two political rookies are winning the presidency on a third party ticket. There is also no way you’d be having a fancy state dinner with the leader of a country you’ve had active hostility with for ten years. It’s like if Melanie or Jill Biden were attending a state dinner with the Taliban. My boyfriend made a joke that this was written like what a person from the mid-west thinks DC is like and then I read the author bio and she’s from Kansas City (not to offend anyone from the Mid-West) .

This book also has the most muddled timeline I’ve ever read. I’m still not clear on how long Ash’s wife was dead before he started hooking up with Greer. The reader is told she’s been dead for a year but then he tells Greer that he hooked up with his HALF-SISTER a month prior to him and Greer hooking up (THE BOOK FULLY GLOSSES OVER THE INCEST. IT’S MENTIONED ONCE AND THEY MOVE ON). And he says that that hook up happened pretty much right after his wife’s funeral which would imply that it’s only been as little over a month since she died when Ash and Greer start hooking up. But also he’s the current president and his wife died during the campaign and there’s roughly two months between the election and the inauguration and AN EDITOR SHOULD HAVE CAUGHT THIS BEAUSE I SPENT SO MUCH TIME CONFUSED.

Finally, I hated the amount of Catholicism throughout this book. This is supposed to be EROTICA and the author spent so much time assuring the reader that none of the women were sluts. She went out of her way to say that Greer’s promiscuous cousin only slept with men she respected/admired. I DON’T GIVE A FUCK!!! LET WOMEN SLEEP WITH AS MANY MEN AS THEY WANT. I DON’T NEED EVERY SEXUAL ENCOUNTER TO COME WITH CAVEATS!! I also don’t want to constantly read about saints and Old Testament bible stories. I get that this is supposed to be a taboo romance but fuck, if I wanted to read something steeped in religion I would have picked up Priest. This also does nothing to advance the plot beyond (I think?) attempting to make Greer seem more chaste??? She’s only had sex with one guy once. I don’t need the fact that she’s also Catholic to tell me that she’s inexperienced (also why do erotica authors insist that their characters have to be either virginal or almost virginal but still fully into violently rough sex???).

There is so much about this book that I could not fucking stand but I think the most annoying part about it was its attempts to be anything other than erotica. The political intrigue was half-assed at best and the war flashbacks were laughable. The main character was basically flat-Stanley with a vagina and it was somehow prudish despite the fact that Ash throat-fucks the main character only their third/fourth time meeting over the course of 10 years.

aureliacorvina's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

the_book_bear's review against another edition

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4.25

Holy fuck that was hot. There were some bits (re. the concept of virginity and not negotiated kink) where I was like ‘ooh don’t love that’, but overall very hot.

After reading American Prince and American King, I wish I had stopped reading after finishing American queen. Other than the very final scene, which is a cliffhanger, American Queen ends in such a nice promising way, and the remaining 2 books are just drama / trauma / sadness. Sure there’s smut, but it’s always tinged with sadness.