Review: June, Reimagined by Rebekah Crane

June, Reimagined by Rebekah Crane

Recommended: noooo
Hateable characters, rampant sexism, lust-not-love, conflict would be 100% solved by talking to each other at any point, and a dead brother is used as a convenient but insignificant plot point. Lots of possessive male bullshit in this one. Lots of the female MC thinking “I’m just being oversensitive, too emotional” and that never being resolved into her saying “hey fuck those guys, I’m entitled to my feelings and also they’re being total assholes and trying to control me and my body!”

Summary

June Merriweather is on the run—from her own life. Her brother is dead, her parents are liars, and her college major is a joke. Apart from her best friend, Matt, June is desperate for reinvention. And a one-way ticket out of Cincinnati to the Scottish Highlands is a good place to start.

With a backpack, an urn, and a secret, June begins again. She snags a job at a café and finds lodging at a quaint inn with a quirky cast of housemates. The only problem: the inn’s infuriatingly perceptive (and sexy) owner, Lennox. He’s suspicious of June. After all, no one comes to Scotland in the winter unless they’re running from something. From rocky start to sizzling temptation, June’s new world is exhilarating…and one detour away from disaster.

With her past and her future both vying for attention, June can’t begin to picture where her reimagined life is headed next. And falling in love with the last person she expected is only the beginning.

Thoughts

Here are all the reasons I would have DNFd this book at 20% if it hadn’t been a review copy. Note: lots of swearing follows.

1. I hated all the characters, except Hamish. June is 20 or 21 and this is billed as an adult novel, but BOY does she act like a child. She’s petty and stubborn and reactive and judgmental. I really really did not like her from early on, and honestly I didn’t care for her by the end, either. Lennox doesn’t really have a personality, either. The side character who is a writer conveniently spells out all the events of the book in a sort of meta way, and I found that really dull. The best friend, Matt? He was SO annoying! He seems like a total prat, and at the big climax all I could feel was a mild spite because he was such a douche in my eyes. What a possessive, entitled asshole. And Angus. Angus will get an entire bullet point of his own later on here. 😐

2. The romance was dismal. They both hate each other, and as far as I can tell, she hates him because he saved her life and he hates her because she’s allergic to peanuts. I don’t even know. It was honestly so flimsy and forced and stupid that it just came across to me like they were both assholes for no reason. There’s also no emotional connection, as every time they’re nearby June is immediately overtaken with physical lust. Which, okay, that can be a part of romance, but it overrode any other connection they might have had and just turned into “I NEED YOU TO BE NAKED AND BANG ME!” Also FYI the sex scenes are short, vague, and flowery. Lots of “we burn together into the stars” kind of writing and then fade to black. So for all that lust, there’s pretty much zero follow through.

3. The Grand Gesture at the end was crap, as well. They both barely put in any effort to talk about things and say how they were feeling. I don’t think they did at any point, really. The whole thing was based on assumptions and self-sacrifice, which are two of the things that annoy me the most. I hate screaming at them JUST FUCKING TALK TO EACH OTHER ALREADY!!!!

4. Did you forget her brother was dead, and that was the whole inciting thing? Because I did. He neatly bookmarks the beginning and end of the book, but June never seems particularly sad or grief ridden or to even think about him, to be honest. It’s just about her living in Scotland with her new friends and this guy she wants to bang. This felt like it was just a plot point, and that’s quite cheap to do when dealing with the death of a sibling and child (for her parents).

► View spoilers

Honestly the only time I remembered Josh was when tries to run into a burning building to save his ashes. DUDE IS ALREADY ASHES! What, is he going to get MORE BURNED?

5. Angus. He’s an incredibly sexist, homophobic, misogynistic asshole who spends the whole book harassing people while they excuse him and say “aww just ignore him, he’s Angus, what a silly boy.” One of the characters constantly tells him no, no, no, leave me alone, I’m not interested, no. And he’s the guy who thinks “Ah, she’s playing hard to get” and doesn’t back the fuck off. I hated him so much that I genuinely would have stopped reading just to never encounter this fuckwad ever again.

Alas. It was a copy from NetGalley.

Also, yo, I’m super confused because I’ve enjoyed other books by this author that had incredibly different vibes (thoughtful, sensitive, etc). I have no idea how this one is so far off course.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free copy of this title. This is my honest review, which is probably pretty obvious.