This week we are discussing Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake, Ch. 1-11.
Content Warning!!! This book contains situations and subjects related to: sexual content, death of a parent, alcohol, abandonment trauma, emotional abuse, and bullying.
Spoiler Warning!!! This post is full of spoilers for Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake.
Discussion:
Jacilyn: Hello friends and welcome to our very first discussion of 2023! Our first book this year is Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake, a lighthearted queer romance. The holidays are often a stressful time, so we wanted to begin the year with something a little lighter and calmer, but that’s not to say this book doesn’t have any emotional depth. Delilah and her step-sister Astrid have a strained relationship after a difficult childhood together, and they have two completely different perceptions of what went down between them.
Michaela: I am really enjoying getting the two sides of the same story, even though one of those sides is second hand through Astrid’s best friend Claire. So far I am loving this book. I already care about all the characters….except Astrid’s fiance, Spencer. Throw the whole man away! He definitely has narcissist traits and treats Astrid horribly, so freaking smarmy. Ugh. Anyways, everyone else for the most part are good characters in their own ways. Even the ones we don’t like right now, we are getting some insight into why they are that way.
Delilah is different from how I expected her to be. Usually the main character in these always feels a lot more reserved and naive to me than Delilah does. I’m enjoying how different this romance feels already. Also, I can already feel the spice coming in this one, we have some forced proximity happening which always gets me.
Jacilyn: Spencer and Isabel are on my shit list, even though I do empathize with the grief she experienced after Delilah’s dad died. I’m sure she probably does truly love Astrid, but she’s doing a bad job of showing it. Both Astrid and Delilah have visceral, physical reactions to Isabel’s presence, which just shows how deep that trauma goes. It makes me so sad that Delilah and Astrid could have had each other’s friendship and companionship growing up, if only they had been given the tools to do so. Iris treated and still treats Delilah rather cruelly, and though I know that it’s out of protectiveness for Astrid, it doesn’t make it okay.
Josh seems like he’s trying to do his best at being a good father, but it’s clear that he’s stumbling a bit. I don’t think he intentionally undermines Claire, but his actions do still have that consequence. I can see the effort he’s putting in, though, and that it’s because he loves his daughter. And, I totally understand why Claire is so hesitant and anxious about it all. If I were in her shoes, I’d want to save my daughter from any further disappointment and heartbreak, too.
I’m looking forward to watching Claire and Delilah’s relationship continue to develop. The chemistry is totally there, and with the addition of the shared bed trope…. If there’s no spice soon, I’m going to be so disappointed!
Michaela: I think Isabel loves both girls but she has definitely shut herself down after Delilah’s dad passed away. Especially considering how Claire described Astrid and constantly clinging to Isabel for some sort of love. If Isabel had always been that way then Astrid wouldn’t have been so desperate for her mother’s attention, I feel like it had to have been quite a sudden change in Isabel after losing her first and second husbands. Isabel definitely is the reason why there is tension and distance between Astrid and Delilah. I don’t even think it’s an “evil stepmother” kind of thing. I really think it all comes down to emotional neglect and generational/society driven mentality, like how Isabel doesn’t approve of Delilah’s tattoos or her clothes.
I don’t think Josh is intentionally trying to mess with things with Ruby and Claire but nonetheless that is what he’s done. He has been around and then left multiple times and then tries to parent Ruby on certain things without taking into consideration what Claire is okay with or needs. He’s definitely learning as we go through the story but he’s not very mindful yet and mostly just wants to have fun with Ruby, which is understandable but not sustainable when you also need to be a parent. I can totally see why Claire is feeling that kind of rejection when she realizes she isn’t the fun parent right now because Josh is back in town. Both my parents tried to be the funnest parent for a long time after separating, even for the kids it’s exhausting.
I love that Ruby and Delilah have this special connection already. Ruby is a cool kid who is going through puberty and dealing with some abandonment issues, she just wants to be listened to. Claire seems like such a good mom and the way she knew to just let Delilah help Ruby even when she was overwhelmed was great. I love when couples in romance books have a separate connection besides the spicy connection, Delilah can connect to Claire by having a relationship with Ruby and I love to see it.
Iris, though, is a piece of work. I do like her character but she is, at times, unreasonably mean to Delilah. Even with her relationship to Astrid, she can be overly rude to Delilah. Even in the flashbacks we’ve gotten from when they were kids it still felt awfully over the top at times how mean Iris and Astrid were when Delilah was just existing. Obviously kids can be like this, I was treated that way by certain classmates in school too, but Iris is weirdly mean when even Astrid isn’t that bad. Also, the fact that Isabel doesn’t correct that behavior….ooooo the anger tingles are happening! She’s not exactly encouraging it but she’s not stopping it either, but she also doesn’t stop Delilah when she says mean things to Astrid, so again it just feels like emotional neglect to me.
Also, side note, his town is so freaking cozy even with the small town drama. Can we go find this town? I need to experience that book store! It reminds me of the town in the show Gilmore Girls so far, I hope we get a little more detail about it as the story continues.
Jacilyn: You know how much I love Oregon - It would be super cool to find a town like this there. I’m not sure if it’s a fictional town or what, but I’m sure the businesses are fictional at the very least. And of course, evil Spencer wants to take Astrid away from it. From the place she loves, her friends, her family, her business. We’ve experienced something similar with a friend before, the isolation that the abusive partner encourages and the way the victim kind of compartmentalizes their relationship away from their friendships. That’s a horribly difficult conversation to broach with a friend, and even more so when the friend is as high strung as Astrid is (although, perhaps she’d be less high strung with Spencer out of the picture.) He is 100% a narcissist and enjoys using her for his every whim and fancy entirely too much. It’s disgusting and he makes me so uncomfortable.
Also - TWO WHOLE WEEKS of wedding festivities? I know Astrid and Isabel are loaded, but seriously? I have anxiety just imagining that. I’m sure Spencer finds it to be a status symbol and is all about it. I hope that the four women manage to have some fun at the vineyard and spa, but something tells me there will be some hurdles with Iris, Claire, and Delilah’s plan to try to convince Astrid to take the trash out.
Michaela: Spencer gets so much enjoyment out of just manipulating Astrid to do everything for him, it’s so GROSS! Ugh I hate that and him so much. And the whole moving thing just pisses me off, she clearly does not want to move and it also makes absolutely no sense for her to move when first of all she doesn’t want to, second her family and friends are there, and third her business is in that town and it is successful. Find the sense; you can’t!
Listen, two weeks of wedding crap is absolutely insane. Who has that much time on their hands to plan all that and then to attend all that. I only took off 4 days for my own wedding. And why would you want every single event photographed? That’s so much. We have hundreds of photos just from the one day for our wedding and that’s plenty to sift through. It feels like it’s over compensation for the lack of a healthy relationship between Astrid and Spencer. You know the studies that show the more a couple posts online the more likely it is that the behind the scenes is not so perfect and the less a couple posts the more likely it is that they’re super happy. Ya that’s what this feels like to me. Astrid is planning two whole weeks of stuff to show everyone how happy they are and how excited she is to marry him. Feeeelllllssssss like a red flag, which we know Spencer completely consists of, legend says his red flags are innumerable.
Super excited to see how Delilah, Claire, and Iris accomplished their mission. There are definitely going to be a lot of hurdles though. Also, I am loving the dynamic between Claire and Delilah despite their complicated history. I think so far this story has a lot happening and it’s all working together to tell a very intriguing story for me. I think that’s all for this discussion, friends. Looking forward to our next discussion when hopefully we have some fun developments!
Kommentare