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ONE TO WATCH meets BEACH READ in this smart, swoony, romantic comedy, in which two college exes find themselves battling against each other—and their unresolved feelings—for a spot in a prestigious literature Ph.D. program. Allison Avery loves to win. After acing every academic challenge she’s come up against, she’s finally been accepted into her dream Ph.D. program at Claymore University, studying medieval literature under a professor she’s admired for years. Sure, grad school isn’t easy—the classes are intense, her best friend is drifting away, and her students would rather pull all-nighters than discuss The Knight's Tale—but she’s got this. Until she discovers her ex-boyfriend has also been accepted. Colin Benjamin might be the only person who loves winning more than Allison does, and when they're both assigned to TA for the same professor, the game is on. What starts as a personal battle of wits (and lit) turns into all-out war when their professor announces a career-changing research trip opportunity—with one spot to fill. Competing with Colin is as natural as breathing, and after he shattered her heart two years ago, Allison refuses to let him come out on top. But when a family emergency and a late night road trip—plus a very sexy game of Scrabble—throw them together for a weekend, she starts to wonder if they could be stronger on the same team. And if they fall for each other all over again, Allison will have to choose between a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and what could be a twice-in-a-lifetime love. Charmingly bookish and unequivocally fat positive, The Make-Up Test embraces the truth that people can sometimes change and grow, even when you least expect it.
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0Sigh. I really wanted to enjoy this book. It’s sold, hyped, and blurbed as a romance/rom-com, which to me means a guaranteed HEA where the MCs end up together. Fundamentally, the problem in this particular book is that the MCs ending up together did not feel like a triumph, but rather, kind of icky.
The MMC, Colin, was written with some decent explanation for how/why he has genuinely changed since the first go round of his relationship with Allison and is a much better partner and person than he was previously. But even though he’s better in some ways, he’s still fundamentally shitty to her in the way that he sulks about her knowing more about their shared field (uh yeah, because she’s been working towards it her whole academic career and he just pivoted his interest in the last year or two—very unattractive, and the way Allison takes ownership of his feelings of insecurity towards the end of the book is super disappointing), and the fact that he blatantly rips off the title of Allison’s big presentation without consulting with her (and the “haha, gotcha!” of him ripping off the title but not the actual content is not as comforting as the narrative would have the reader believe). Given Allison and Colin’s history and his claim that he’s in love with her and never stopped loving her, using her title (and blindsiding her with it) was an epically insensitive move AT BEST—and then the narrative suggests that SHE’S the asshole for jumping to conclusions and assuming he didn’t just rip off her title. I mean, how dare she assume he stole her idea for the whole presentation just because he stole the title?
0I'm going to be honest, I got about a third of the way through this book and came to see what other people thought - mainly because the ML, Colin, was so unlikable and I wanted to make sure it wasn't just me. I think there was a solid character for him that got whittled down to this shell due to publisher pressure and editing.
I want to give this author the benefit of the doubt, especially with the subtext throughout the latter half of the book (from what I've read in multiple reviews) basically saying that women are and should be lesser in academia. This is a trigger than I cannot handle and do not want to bring myself to read. But the author says that she wrote this book because of her time in academia and again I have to get the botd that this message was added/tweaked what have you due to publisher/editor preference.
Big sad.
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