Cruel to be Kind Review

Cruel to be Kind (The Madisons #1) by Olivia M. Jacques

Cruel to be Kind nearly got DNF'd more times than I care to admit, but I am thankful I pushed through to the end.

I chose this book because its another closed door romance I got from Stuff Your Kindle Day last year.

Summary: Claire's marriage to her hunky high school sweetheart appears to be blowing up after the discovery of a letter in his sock drawer.

Review: I gave Cruel to be Kind 2.75 stars. The first two-thirds of the book takes place in about 2 days. I get why the book was written this way, but I can safely say I am not a fan of slow-burns. The story felt like it was going absolutely nowhere but we knew everything about our main character, Claire. The actual writing and story was good, but the book as a whole was just hard to get through.

Quotes:

• Same goes for Whiskey and Scotch, by the way. Those people are something else. Like, if I wanted my throat to burn with evil fire, I'd...not want that? Who wants that?

I know it was kind of real life, but Claire jumping to the assumption that her marriage was over before the story even began was an over-reaction. And everything she did afterwards was so dang cringey and dramatic. I seriously wanted to shake her the whole book and ask why she wasn't meeting her husband in the middle and talking to him to find out what the problem was. Save your own marriage, dang it!!! Her character was just immature in my opinion.

The story as a whole picture was good, but the amount of details could have been dialed back some. I would have liked to have seen some character growth instead of all the dramatics. The ending, however, did wreck me - in a positive way.

Content Warnings: child/infant loss