by Elsie Silver

Star Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.25

Quick Take: Overall an entertaining, sexy read with a lot of fun banter, but a little longer than it needed to be.

Favorite Quotes: “Rosie, I’m a grown-ass man. Your period doesn’t scare me.” (275)

“I definitely don’t hate you, Rosie. Not even close. But I can fuck you like I do if that’s what you need.” (302)

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What I Loved:

The flirtatious teasing and banter between the main characters, Rosie and Ford, especially in the first half of the book. Their jabs at one another felt like good-natured ribbing, rather than anything with true animus behind it. I particularly loved the quippy work emails they’d send one another—these were some of the funniest moments in the book.

That Ford carried a torch for Rosie for over a decade. In male-female romance books, I always love when the man has been in love with the woman for years, especially when she’s misconstrued his feelings, thinking he was disinterested or annoyed by her. But really, that disinterest or irritation is the guy’s way of hiding feelings he fears are unacceptable or unwanted.

The slow burn followed by steamy sex scenes. I’ll say this for Silver: she really does know how to write a good sex scene. And I love a good sex scene all the more when I have to wait for it—the tension just builds and builds between the characters until it boils over.

On a related note, I so appreciate that Rosie and Ford don’t have penetrative sex right away. In a lot of romance novels, the characters end up having sex the first time they kiss. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not as tantalizing or satisfying, in my opinion.

What I Didn’t Love:

After Rosie and Ford finally get together, their good-natured teasing turns meaner. This was the opposite of what I’ve seen in many enemies-to-lovers novels, where initial cruelty turns more playful once the characters actually acknowledge their feelings for each other.

I hate it when fighting and cruelty are conflated with passion. Initially, I was so excited that this book seemed like it was going to flip this trope on its head, and was disappointed when it didn’t. I wish Silver had kept the initial lightness to Rosie and Ford’s banter, but as it went on, I felt like these characters seemed to bring out the worst in each other.

Some really important secondary characters and subplots got overshadowed and didn’t receive nearly as much page space as they deserved.

Most notably, Rosie’s brother West, who also happens to be Ford’s best friend. Their fear of upsetting West is supposed to be one of the primary reasons that Ford and Rosie are reluctant to get together. But West is barely in this book! He deserved to be in it much more, and the novel would have been more satisfying for it.

Sometimes the language felt inauthentic to the characters. I noticed this with Rosie’s diary entries from high school—they often didn’t sound like they’d been written by a teenager. (That said, I did really enjoy the inclusion of her diary entries overall, and the way they gave us more insight into Rosie and Ford’s dynamic as teens.)

The language felt most inauthentic to me reading Ford’s POV. His language turned flowery and poetic at times as he described the setting in depth. It felt totally inconsistent with his character. The worst offender:

“The smell of lilacs permeates the air, emanating from the bush behind us, while the minerality of the lake water beside us adds a soft undertone.” (211)

I know I criticized quite a few things, but I’ll say this: I liked the parts I liked more than I disliked the parts I disliked. And most of my critiques are me being nitpicky. This is an incredibly popular book and series, beloved by many romance readers. Wild Love definitely piqued my interest in Elsie Silver as an author and I plan to read more by her.