2024~13. Rosalind Parker Takes The Cake

Alexis Hall. 2021.

Following a tough couple of reads, I was hopeful that this book was going to be a breath of fresh air.  And it was...until it wasn't.  

First off, this book is funny.  It takes place on a fictionalized version of The Great British Baking Show and it does a great job of developing the characters and their backstories, which are to some extent different than the on-screen stories that are being told about them.  Some of the dialogue is laugh out loud funny where I legitimately giggled while I was reading, which is pretty rare for me.  I loved the main character and her ex-lover now best friend and their witty banter and quirky relationship.  

I also loved the idea of the storyline, in which the child of two career-driver professionals realizes she doesn't want that life for herself and finds a way to navigate comfort with that.

But, and here is where I cannot proceed without spoiler alerts, so SPOILER ALERTS.  

The sexual assault in this book does not feel good or get resolved well at all.  It comes out of no where in the midst of a light, funny book.  It does not shift gears well and from this point in the story forward, all of the progressive, feel good parts of the book fall apart.  Rosaline, the book's namesake, is a really fun protagonist.  A bi-sexual woman who had a brief affair in college which leads to a baby girl and a series of menial jobs and a life of financial instability.  The daughter, now about 8, is nerdy, brilliant, and sassy, made even more so by Rosaline's no holds barred style of parenting, filled with direct information about relationships and sex and lots of swearing.  Rosaline's best friend is an ex-lover with whom she has remained dear friends despite a very tumultuous fling in which feelings were hurt and drama was had.  The ex-lover is her biggest supporter and has a dynamic relationship with the kid that is anything from trite or a trope.  Some of the best moments of the book are between these three characters.  For most of the book, Roseline's comfort with her sex life is impressive and her friend's chastising about not "slut shaming" herself at times is refreshing.  It is against this backdrop that the end of the book is just so disappointing.

At the beginning of the book, Roseline makes the unfortunate decision to hook up with the stable guy from the bake-off show whom she knows her judgmental parents will love.  And they do.  The three of them embark on a painful path of trying to get Rosaline to go back to college and get her life back on track.  The book was doing so well following this arc as Roseline realizes she loves baking and doesn't want to go to school or follow in her parents' footsteps, but the story completely falls apart when she yells at her parents once and then her mother basically completely changes her behavior and attitude and comes to understand and respect her choices.  Like, what?  Sigh.  That was a step too far.  The part where she creates the riff, pulls back from the relationship, and figures a way not to let them continue to shame and belittle her by putting up a healthy boundary was awesome.  The part where it just immediately fixes everything just felt hollow and made it seems like she was pretty dense for not having done that 8 years earlier.

In any event, that plotting problem was nothing compared to the decisions made about the romance arc, which was by far the most disappointing.  After the mediocre boyfriend gets worse and worse, culminating in a scene where he and his ex-girlfriend trap Roseline in his house for a non-consensual threesome that turns into his ex-girlfriend sexually assaulting Roseline, Roseline calls another bake-show contestant, who just so happens to be the hunky electrician her parents hate who came to her rescue when the faulty wiring in her house left her in the dark with a ruined cake in the oven, to come to her rescue and next thing we know the two of them are together and that is the happy ending.  There is just something about the bi-sexual woman getting sexually assaulted by the bi-curious woman being saved by the ultimate cis-het-man trope that did not sit well with me at all. 

END OF SPOILER ALERTS.
It was such a disappointment after such a great start, both in terms of plotting, character development, and laughs.

​Do not recommend.

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