I can’t. DNF. The tone is all over the place. It wants to be Veep but it also wants to be Disney, and the reason Veep works is it’s a smart, merciless farce of politics, not an earnest utopia where good guys save the day. I dunno. Without the politics, I could’ve just said the romance wasn’t my cup of tea and left it at that. But with the politics, it really got under my skin. It’s full of blatant partisan pandering, daft mistakes (I know it’s AU, but that’s not just a blanket excuse to be lazy), and so much virtue-signaling that it reads like propaganda at its worst instead of fanfic at its best.
Maybe I’m just too old, but there are way better romances out there, especially M/M romances, ones where the characters are actually distinguishable from each other, don’t get all of their knowledge from Hamilton and The West Wing, and act like, you know, actual people instead of Tumblr tropes. The thing is, I’m into wish-fulfillment and fluff and imagining a better world than the one we’ve got. I just wanted something more out of this than regurgitated partisan politics. Cut through the bullshit and hypocrisy, don’t buy into it.
Tons of people love it, including people I know. That’s the reason I picked it up. But the best thing about it is the 1- and 2-star reviews that are generous and smart and don’t buy what it’s selling. That sounds harsh, but jeez. A book hasn’t made me this disgruntled in a while.