Better than Fiction by Alexa Martin

Better than Fiction by Alexa Martin is a book about Drew, whose grandmother has just died, and her journey in owning her grandmother’s bookstore as a person who doesn’t like to read, and the author she meets at a store event: Jasper Williams, the romance author of all romance authors and the man who’s taken it upon himself to create a love for books in Drew.

Honestly, this book was a disappointment. I didn’t enjoy reading it, but I didn’t hate it; and I think most of that can be pinned on the marketing of this book. I wish that I could review this as a contemporary fiction with a focus on grief and difficult family relations, but alas, it was supposed to be a romance.

I’m going to try and avoid spoilers at least until I get to the plot portion, but once I’m there, all bets are off, and I will be ranting and spoiling so much, so if you don’t like spoilers, I would definitely recommend you skip that portion.

Genre

This book was marketed to me as a romance, and I just don’t think that’s an appropriate genre for this book. The focus felt like it was more on Drew’s grief and her journey to figure out what her grandmother wanted from her, as well as figuring out how to enjoy life and run the bookstore she inherited.

The romance felt extremely underdeveloped, with Drew and Jasper getting together and then several months - arguably the most important months in a romance novel - are skipped, and suddenly they’ve been together, going on adventures, having a great time, and I haven’t been there for any of it.

The lack of early development was detrimental to connecting with the characters - more specifically Jasper - and believing this romance was meant to last. And if this hadn’t been a romance novel, the world wouldn’t have ended by any means, and it would have been plenty enjoyable, but because it was a romance, it was extremely unsatisfying and just not something I enjoyed.

By contrast, this book would have done amazingly as a testament to Drew’s journey through grief, connecting with family members, and figuring out what she wanted to do with her life. Of course, some edits would have needed to be made - more time spent on the grief process and Drew’s relationship with her sister - but the foundation for a book about that is there.

I think Alexa was fighting to make a romance, but she wanted to also comment on the grief process, and those two things can - of course - go hand in hand. The issue here is that one thing eventually needs to overpower the other, and we can’t skip months of the romance just to make sure we have time to go over everything else when you’re trying to write a romance novel.

Characters

Jasper
I didn’t care for Jasper. I said it, he really isn’t all that amazing. I don’t know if this is a hot take, honestly, but he was just so boring. He was way too perfect, and there wasn’t enough from him that I felt like it really justified him being the love interest in this book.

The one thing he did “wrong” wasn’t even all that wrong, which means that he’s literally perfection, and while I don’t want a piece of shit for the lead in a romance novel, I want someone who’s flawed.

Jasper’s character would have been so much more interesting if he’d had any sort of personality; and it would’ve been so easy if the author had just done something as simple as having him react to all the people who were crushing on him and thought he was hot (and we’re even going to ignore how unrealistic that reaction to him was, okay; I’m trying to be nice about him).

Drew
Drew lied to me from page one, telling me that she was a bitchy, closed off person. Do you know how many people she was a bitch to? Exactly zero. And guess who she was closed off towards? Strangers. Like any other normal human fucking being.

It was so exhausting to constantly have her say “I’m not comfortable talking to people” and then she literally opens up to Jasper on their first date by trauma dumping on him. I’m sorry, but if you aren’t a chatterbox, you are not going to dump your life story on a man during your first date.

Then you had the whole “Jasper Williams, Author” thing going on every other fucking chapter. Like, Jesus Christ I get it! Jasper Williams wrote some of the hottest books known to women, and he’s a bestselling author. Stop beating me over the fucking head with it; it wasn’t cute; it wasn’t quirky; it was just annoying.

And she never did it with anyone else, which made it even more annoying because the author is blatantly trying to tell me that Jasper Williams is really something special, and I should adore him, and I am just not about that life.

And if that wasn’t enough reason to dislike Drew, she went from resentment towards her sister to Daisy literally becoming her best friend in the course of a single day, and considering her resentment towards her sister was related to their different relationships with their father, I feel uniquely qualified to tell you that there is absolutely nothing more unrealistic than that resentment just vanishing.

As someone with an older (step) sister and (step) brother who were raised by my biological father, I can tell you that there will probably always be at least some resentment between Drew and Daisy about the fact that Daisy got the dad Drew desperately wanted while she was cast aside.

To put it to you simply: I don’t want a relationship with my father, but I still hate that he was a dad to Taylor and PJ, and I was literally raised by a man who is my dad. Drew didn’t have that so you can’t expect me to believe that she forgave Daisy the moment she realized it wasn’t Daisy’s fault and that Daisy had her own struggles with Andrew; that just isn’t realistic.

Side Characters
All of that to say, Daisy and Elsie were definitely my favorite characters. Daisy was just a fun person who seemed to always be fluttering about and making herself at home, and while her just showing up at Drew’s apartment was unrealistic, I still loved her.

Elsie reminded me a lot of one of my best friends, and I wish she had been around so much more than she was because at least then I would have had a character I knew, and I could feel good about it.

The old ladies in the book club were also adorable; I loved everything about them, and they definitely should have been around way more than they were, especially since they apparently used Drew’s store as their primary hangout and that’s where quite a few of the scenes took place. Something about meddling old women is my favorite thing in the world, and I will never complain when I get that.

Plot

This book had so much potential. I love stories about people who fall in love with reading, and equally, I love stories about people falling in love with each other, and this story just fell off. So now that I’m reviewing the plot of this book, all bets are off when it comes to spoilers, so look away.

First and foremost, the beginning of this book was pretty good; it was certainly better than the ending. The middle of the book was a bit of a drag, but the ending is where I start to get angry.

The most annoying thing about a third act breakup is when it’s extremely clearly manufactured, such as in this case. To explain: Jasper had a conversation - well, a few conversations - with Drew’s grandmother before she died, and he never told Drew. More than likely because most of their conversations were business related, and they were absolutely irrelevant.

Don’t get me wrong; Drew was well within her rights to be angry when she found out that Jasper had spoken to her grandmother and hadn’t told her. However, the overreaction of causing a breakup and not allowing Jasper to explain himself is giving high school, it’s giving immature, and it’s giving obnoxious and bad writing that the author couldn’t come up with a better third act conflict.

Then the reunion is so cringey. The point of a grand gesture is to do something that will center the person you’re apologizing to and apologize properly. While Drew got the second half of that, I guess, the first half of that just wasn’t there. She took a moment that was supposed to be about him and made it about herself, and you know what, I won’t have double standards and allow her to get away with it. It would’ve been way more appropriate for her to wait until afterwards and say something, to take that big day and make it better instead of taking the attention off him for that moment.

Final Rating

This book deserves all of two stars for a romance. It was weak, it skipped the most important parts, and the male lead was perhaps the most boring MMC I’ve read in recent days.

It’s not something I would recommend reading, and I probably won’t go for any of this author’s books in the future because I just don’t think I like her writing. If I hear that she gets better at centering the romance in romance novels, I’d be happy to give her another chance, but as of now, I’ll be happy to never read anything else by this author.