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A review by cakt1991
The One You Want by Emma Barry
emotional
medium-paced
3.0
I received an ARC from the author and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
The One You Want is a repackaging/reprint of an older book by Emma Barry called Special Interests, and while I do own the original version, I never got around to reading it. While she states it’s “lightly edited,” the overall tone is still consistent with the environment of Obama-era politics. That does make it an odd read now, with how much has shifted within the last few years, but I appreciate Barry’s own admission that she also views our current political climate with more cynicism today and this is more of a fictional ode to her own time working as a political staffer.
And I did enjoy the political bits, and I think they’re the parts that shine the most through the book. Barry was conscious that readers likely would not have the inner knowledge she had, and she managed to make the stuff about what goes into the passage of a bill interesting.
The characters, while somewhat uneven for me, were also pretty good. I adore Parker’s relationship with his grandfather, who is dealing with Alzheimer’s and is at the stage where he doesn’t recognize him. Their interactions were the most emotionally engaging of the book. And I appreciated the way Millie worked through trauma following an incident at the start of the book, especially given the public nature of her career.
But the romance left me wanting a lot more. The two of them being somewhat at odds over the passage of the bill was intriguing, and I appreciated this way of showing subtle political differences that ultimately lead to them compromising in a much more effective way than more recent attempts at navigating political romance. But the way angst and questions of commitment were thrown in turned me off, as it just made me not really care if these two got together or not.
I do enjoy this book for what it is, and am excited to get to the rest of the series, which I also have ARCs for, in hopes one of those will work better for me as a romance. While politics has always been a contentious topic in romance, I do hope anyone who didn’t give this book a chance before will try it now, especially if the romantic elements sound appealing to you.
The One You Want is a repackaging/reprint of an older book by Emma Barry called Special Interests, and while I do own the original version, I never got around to reading it. While she states it’s “lightly edited,” the overall tone is still consistent with the environment of Obama-era politics. That does make it an odd read now, with how much has shifted within the last few years, but I appreciate Barry’s own admission that she also views our current political climate with more cynicism today and this is more of a fictional ode to her own time working as a political staffer.
And I did enjoy the political bits, and I think they’re the parts that shine the most through the book. Barry was conscious that readers likely would not have the inner knowledge she had, and she managed to make the stuff about what goes into the passage of a bill interesting.
The characters, while somewhat uneven for me, were also pretty good. I adore Parker’s relationship with his grandfather, who is dealing with Alzheimer’s and is at the stage where he doesn’t recognize him. Their interactions were the most emotionally engaging of the book. And I appreciated the way Millie worked through trauma following an incident at the start of the book, especially given the public nature of her career.
But the romance left me wanting a lot more. The two of them being somewhat at odds over the passage of the bill was intriguing, and I appreciated this way of showing subtle political differences that ultimately lead to them compromising in a much more effective way than more recent attempts at navigating political romance. But the way angst and questions of commitment were thrown in turned me off, as it just made me not really care if these two got together or not.
I do enjoy this book for what it is, and am excited to get to the rest of the series, which I also have ARCs for, in hopes one of those will work better for me as a romance. While politics has always been a contentious topic in romance, I do hope anyone who didn’t give this book a chance before will try it now, especially if the romantic elements sound appealing to you.