Three Wishes by Seressia Glass

On the plus side, I really like Glass’s writing style.

And the minus side: the characters were either clichés or cardboard cut outs.

Heroine is a Mary Sue, from a family of Mary Sues and Marty Stus. Her complete isolation (work from home, no friends outside family), her obsession with having a child, and her mental unhealthiness really detracted from the story. The hero is very vanilla (literally as well as figuratively since he’s white to the heroine’s black Vietnamese ethnicity) except for the Stupidest Thing he did. The child? Preternaturally well behaved and knowing; she only acted her age once through out the book.

I could’ve gotten past the ~meh~ characters because I enjoyed Glass’s voice immensely. The book was very well-paced and the relationship developed smoothly. But the ending (which was predictable for Romancelandia) killed the book for me – it included Magic Sperm. The previously infertile heroine was suddenly a Baby Machine. I wish romance would address infertility in a healthy way, instead of making in “clear” that it can be cured by True Love. I also wish that authors would write heroines who addressed their potential infertility without burying their heads in the sand.

Serious romance fiction?

The Post is looking for reader recommendations of romance novels for Valentine's Day. Of course, they include their own recommendations...which I've mostly never heard of. So far most of the recs (I'm still scrolling through the comments) are lit fic. Do the Outlander books count as genre romance since Gabaldon says they aren't?