Category: Hot Takes by Holly

This might seem like a weird hill to die on, but I honestly cannot with the little, gold, Protestant crosses in all the fan art of Ilya Rozanov of Heated Rivalry fame. 

ILYA IS RUSSIAN! HE WEARS A RUSSIAN CRUCIFIX!

Okay, Reid doesn’t specifically describe the appearance of the cross, but we’ve got some pretty clear indicators of what we’re dealing with here. In the first place, Reid specifically calls the item that Ilya wears a crucifix. 

A gold chain hung crookedly around Rozanov’s neck, the shiny crucifix resting on his left clavicle just above the famous (ridiculous) tattoo of a snarling grizzly bear (“For Russia! I had it before playing for Bears!”) on his chest. (P. 8)

I could add more citations, because “crucifix” is used a lot, but the first instance (within the first ten pages) is probably sufficient. 

By definition, a crucifix is “a representation of Christ on the cross” (thanks Merriam-Webster), so the plain Protestant cross is not it. 

If you grew up in the West, you are probably familiar with the Catholic crucifix, which is typically not plain and simple. 

Bare minimum, that’s what I would expect to see for Ilya. But no. Plain gold crosses all over the place.

If we’re really going to do our homework, though, we need to acknowledge that the Great Schism (a.k.a. The East-West Schism) occurred in 1054, less than two hundred years after the Christianization of Russia began, and only about a hundred years after the first ruler converted to Christianity. Russia was Christianized by eastern Christians, so Russian churches became Eastern Orthodox, not Roman Catholic. If you go to Russia in January, you will see Christmas trees because Christmas is celebrated on January 7, and the new year is celebrated the week after that. 

The present-day composition of Russian religion according to a relatively recent poll cited by the U.S. State Department indicates 63% of the population identifies as Orthodox Christian, 7% as Muslim, and 26% as unaffiliated (which the CIA factbook notes is a legacy of decades of Soviet promotion of atheism). The Russian government recognizes Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as traditional religions. Ilya’s dad worked for the Minister of Internal Affairs, and knows the minister personally. He’s not some nobody, and the Russian government is still influenced by the Soviet government, in which success relied a lot on who you knew and how good a citizen you were. The probability of Mr. Rozanov marrying a woman who wasn’t a good Russian Orthodox woman is not high, both socially and just as a matter of basic statistical reasoning.

Ergo, Ilya wears a Russian crucifix.

The most noticeable elements of an Orthodox cross are the extra beams, one above the main crossbar and one nearer the base of the cross. So Ilya’s necklace should really look something like this:

But if drawing a full-on crucified Jesus in the fan art is too much (which…okay), then can we at least get the more basic version right?

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This hot take brought to you by Instagram.

I’m going to slide on into Holly’s Hot Takes for a moment to be yelly about jealousy in romance. That is to say, I’m going to be yelly about jealousy being a dealbreaker in romance.

Here’s why: jealousy is a human emotion. 

Refusing to allow characters this emotion is taking an entire work truck out of the romance garage. It is so useful for communicating by showing rather than telling, and it’s also useful for forcing protagonists to grapple with their feelings. 

Please consider: how do we understand that jealousy is happening? What POV are we in? 

If we’re in the head of the jealous character, how are they processing the emotion? How does it change their perception of the situation they find themself in? Is this character finally realizing that there are feelings or insecurities they were not previously aware of? 

If the POV is of the character subject to the jealousy, the question is not only how does that character experience and react to their love interest’s jealousy, but also: what is being communicated to the reader, and does the character understand the same thing as the reader or not? (This is especially helpful in single POV stories.)

Lick, which we just read and discussed on our podcast, is a single POV story. We have no idea what is happening in David’s head without reading what he’s saying and doing, and it’s all expressed through the lens of the narrator, Evie. Therefore, we have no way of understanding that he’s grappling with any emotions at all without him expressing those emotions. He’s jealous. Why is he jealous? Does he know why he’s jealous? Is he being honest with himself or anyone else? What needs to happen in order for him to overcome this jealousy and move forward?

When he’s mad at Evie for not remembering Las Vegas and wants a divorce, David still reacts jealously to his brother flirting with Evie, so we know that there’s something going on with him. Evie knows this and decides not to take it on since she’ll soon be divorced from him. But also we the reader get an inkling that David has his own insecurities and problems to overcome, we just don’t know what they are yet; it’s a hook. As the story continues, even though he’s promised to give Evie the benefit of the doubt, we see further instances when David is just not able to handle himself. It’s not until relatively late in the story that we finally get to learn some past history that adds context to his behavior…and that also reveals the internal problem that David needs to overcome in order to have his HEA. Is he on his best behavior? NO! But he’s having a growth arc just like Evie, even though Evie is the narrator. It’s a hallmark of romance!

I’m sure we can all agree that unchecked jealousy that is angry and controlling is not good. It’s red flag central when someone tries to isolate their partner because of feelings of mistrust and ownership. But we seem to have overcorrected from “actually, that jealous, dark romance hero behavior is NOT sexy” to “any kind of jealousy is a red flag so this is a bad hero,” and I’m not convinced that’s a better approach.

This hot take brought to you by other people’s reviews of Lick by Kylie Scott.

Picture this. I’m reading a romance anthology. It feels like a low-stakes way to try out new authors, and if I’ve got a big, meaty one, it keeps me busy for a while, as I read one novella after another. Yes, I’m a weirdo who reads anthologies front to back. (I did this even before e-books made it harder to flip around.) 

Anyways, I’m reading a romance anthology. This story seems promising! It’s a bodyguard romance, and there’s a suspense element involved. The heroine has a stalker—and the pictures the stalker sends get increasingly more chilling as the book progresses. The bodyguard establishes that the stalker is a member of the heroine’s close inner circle. The final picture arrives, of the heroine holding her best friend’s baby.

And then the book ends. 

And I discover that the follow-up hasn’t been published, even though the original was published in 2016 and the anthology was put together in 2021.

I am big mad.

Here’s my hot take: Don’t include a book with a cliffhanger in an anthology. I feel manipulated as a reader, like you’re using your inclusion as a sneaky way to get me to read more of your stuff, instead of resting on the strength of your writing to entice new readers.

Here’s my hotter take: I am not about to tell writers what to write. If you don’t want to finish your series—or can’t finish your series, for any reason—then don’t. If you end on a cliffhanger, that’s a bummer for readers, but authors are not wish-fulfillment robots. HOWEVER. Double don’t put your cliffhanger teaser in an anthology unless the resolution is actually available for people to read! (Or, in the case of readers who are petty like me, dig up spoilery reviews about.) That’s just bad marketing. 

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This Hot Take by Holly is brought to you by the Romance for Roe anthology, which, except for the cliffhanger, has been pretty fun to read through.

Hi Friends! 

I’m going to take a minute to talk about the difference between “reveling” and “relishing” because if I read another book that says “relishing in” (which I absolutely will, probably this week, even) I am going to SCREAM. 

Please give me a little bit of credit (Just a little bit! I am trying!) for constantly reminding myself that the English language is a living language and is therefore constantly evolving. We don’t need to be huge snobs. We can roll with an evolving language. 
But, like the time I was told “in lieu of” when the speaker meant “in view of,” I simply cannot get behind the use of “relishing” combined with “in”. Can’t do it. You don’t relish in an ice cream cone. You just relish it.

Just look at the definitions of these words (courtesy of Merriam Webster):

relish verb

relished; relishing; relishes

Definition of relish 

transitive verb

1: to add relish to (not relevant to our purposes)

2: to be pleased or gratified by : ENJOY ( ← this one here)

3: to eat or drink with pleasure (tangentially related)

4: to appreciate with taste and discernment (this also works-ish)

intransitive verb

: to have a characteristic or pleasing taste (also not relevant to our purposes)

revel verb

reveled or revelled; reveling or revelling

Definition of revel

intransitive verb

1: to take part in a revel : CAROUSE (relevant probably only from a metaphorical standpoint)

2: to take intense pleasure or satisfaction ( ← this one here)

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It pretty much boils down to the fact that, in use, revel is an intransitive verb while relish is a transitive verb, meaning that relish has a direct object while revel doesn’t. Meaning that whatever is being relished is being acted upon. If the verb is acting on an object (Sam relished(v) the taste(direct object) of Taylor’s mouth(prepositional object).), then there is no need for a prepositional phrase to describe where the verb is occurring (Alex reveled(v) in the heat(prepositional object) of Jaime’s embrace(prepositional object).) Or, because it’s an intransitive verb, Alex could, I suppose, simply revel, no further words required. But we need to know what it is that Sam is relishing or the sentence does not make sense.

So I’m begging for characters that are relishing in things to pretty please just not do that.

A couple of things all happened at once:

1. I read this article about how much publishers charge libraries for e-books. Let’s just say it’s upsetting.
2. I read a paperback for the first time in weeks after all ARCs on my phone, all the time. (It was a Theresa Romain novel and it was DELIGHTFUL.) 
3. I also read, more slowly, How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. Because I do, occasionally, read things that are not smut, thank you very much. 
4. I wanted to revisit a book that I had already read, that I swore that I had purchased an e-copy of, only to discover that it had vanished without a trace from my kindle. 

Look, e-books are extremely convenient. I love being able to choose from a selection of books when I find myself waiting at the doctor’s office or when I’m getting an oil change. (As long as I’ve remembered to actually download them…which is not always a given.) Packing my kindle when I’m going on a trip is much easier than packing 8 paperbacks and 2 hardbacks and then reading none of them. When I have midnight insomnia, it’s nice to be able to read without turning on a light. And it’s way easier to annotate e-books—or rather, it’s way easier to actually go back and *find* my annotations if I’m writing a book up. And the bonus feature of easily being able to search how many times the author uses the word “turgid” is always fun. 

But there is something about reading a book on paper that really works for me. 

I love the physicality of books. I like the way they feel in my hands. I like turning pages and finding a bookmark when I want to set the book down. 

I love the focus I can bring to physical books. It’s so much easier to click away and get sucked into something else when I’m reading on a device. With a physical book, I can tune out distractions and immerse myself more fully in the story. 

I love being able to share books. This is the biggest thing for me. When I read a book I love, the first thing I do is encourage someone else to read it. And the easiest way for me to do that? Give them my copy of the book. When I read a book that was pretty good but that I didn’t love? I give it away, so someone else can enjoy it. And when I read a book that really wasn’t for me? Well, someone else might like it. Truly, the Little Free Library is a gift that keeps on giving.

And you can’t share ebooks. (I mean, I’m sure there are ways to pirate ebooks, but I don’t encourage them.) As evidenced by the case of the mysterious disappearing books, I don’t even fully have ownership over the ebooks I do have. I can’t lend them or give them away when I’m finished. 

Do I read mostly on my kindle these days? Admittedly yes. But paperbacks will always have a place in my heart. And if you want something to read, let me know—I probably have something I can send you.