Review: You Were Made to Be Mine

You Were Made to Be Mine by Julie Anne Long
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
This book was a miss for me. I had read the first book in the series, and was very pleasantly surprised by it, so I was excited to read this one. But I just didn't enjoy it. I had two main issues. One was that the two main characters did not even meet until 1/3 of the way into the book. Once they did meet, they had very few real conversations or time spent together. They had probably 4 conversations--most of which included other people, and only one of which was truly deep and meaningful--before the heroine decided she was completely in love. It didn't feel organic at all. My second big problem was that there was way too much inner monologue. It seemed like the author was trying to make up for the fact that the two MC never really spent time together by having them sit, staring out windows, and obsessing about their life choices and how much they were intrigued by the other MC. It got boring and hard to read, and I started skimming, waiting for some action or INTERaction to start occurring.
And this book might need to come with a trigger warning or something. The heroine suffers--off the pages--from a very serious sexual assault. And to be honest it made the MC's love scene in the book a bit cringy.
The secondary characters were fun, and this could be read as a stand-alone. But I also think that's part of the problem. I would not recommend this book. The focus for a great deal of the book was not on the MC's relationship, but on espionage, revenge, and the various inhabitants of The Grand Palace on the Thames. When the characters finally began to develop feelings for each other the plot felt rushed and flimsy. I really wanted to like it, but just could not.

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