I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
Having enjoyed Kianna Alexander’s work in the past, I was incredibly hyped to hear she was releasing a Black sapphic contemporary. And while it’s not her best work, I did enjoy it for what it had to offer.
I really like how Alexander revolves the story around the characters and their families and community. Summer and Aiko are both Black (Aiko is biracial; part Black, part Japanese), and I love seeing expressions of Blackness so unapologetically, written with Black readers (especially Black queer readers, who aren’t represented often) in mind, focusing on something other than racism.
However, while the intent is there, and there’s a great premise, I can’t help but feel like something was lost in the execution. The dialogue felt awkward, and while the prose style made for a fast read, it also lacked substance. I also feel that beyond the fact that Aiko and Summer have this history together, they do feel rather one-dimensional. The chemistry between them is reasonably well-established and they do have some nice moments, so I didn’t hate reading about them together, but I wish they had a bit more to them.
While this is not Kianna Alexander’s best offering, it’s a fun, relatively light read to pass the time, especially if you like Black/multicultural sapphic romance.

Can't Resist Her is not a bad book, per se. It’s just an unpolished one.

It reads very much like a first draft, and a rough one at that. The characters don’t so much have personalities, as a one single characteristic afforded them by the author, which guides all their actions. They don’t talk like real life people - instead it feels like they read from some coaching textbook on how not to hurt someone else’s feelings.

There’s no meat behind any of it, there are only the bones, the bare structure. The author had an idea for this book, they outlined it with a lot of details, but they forgot to put some life into it.

This of course means that reading Can't Resist Her is a bit like a chore. The book is boring, because there is no one to connect with and no one to root for. There are only ideas.

I do appreciate the basically all-Black cast, the conversations about legacy and gentrification, and love for one’s community. I just wish all of that had some real meaning, that it weren’t just empty words.

This was such a good sapphic story. I loved being able to see a little bit of myself in it. I related to it a lot and loooved all the characters.

Definitely will recommend

A cute and beautiful book about heritage, family and community
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Both protagonists of this story are hooked after sharing a kiss at their prom, so years later when they meet again it is difficult to deny the chemistry and attraction between the two even when they are on opposite sides of the dispute over the renewal of their ancient soul matter
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Summer tries to stop the work that is going to tear down her old school and her grandmother's legacy while Aiko is the supervisor of the project.
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there's a lot of dialogue about community, gentrification and culture. Summer asks at each business or tells the story of each business she goes to on a day to day basis and is very informative.
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I liked Aiko more, I'm not going to lie about this, I liked her personality more, the clarity in her ideas and how she behaved all the time with Summer. I would have liked to have more of her point of view and her orchids, the relationship with her parents and her friends I feel that I would have enjoyed it more
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This is a beautiful romance between two women and their community, how two extremes points can reach a common one and grow
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Thanks to Kianna Alexander and Montlake for give me this beautiful book in exchange for my honest opinion

Thank you NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

As I started reading I initially thought the chemistry between the main characters would surely start to form the more I kept reading, but I didn't feel any type of way about their relationship.

I didn't find myself rooting for them to be together or vise versa. I think the problem for me was the dialogue, it was very bland and it did not flow like it should.

I really love the cover and I do believe the story line has potential but in the end the book fell flat for me.

2.5 ⭐️. I really wanted to like this, but the writing was too weak for me to get past it and be able to enjoy the story. The characters experienced some development by the end of the story, but overall CAN’T RESIST HER was a let-down for me. Extra half star added for decent sex scenes.

Stopped reading at 10%.

Whatever merits Can't Resist Her may have, they'll be difficult to appreciate considering how poorly written this book is. The action, dialogue, and characterization is inauthentic and heavy-handed. Alexander delivers information to readers in a manner that prioritizes expediency over art. For instance, she introduces the topic of a school closing down by having two characters exhaustively detail everything they've done to keep it open—information that both speakers would already be aware of and wouldn't need to rehash. Similarly, one character meets someone new and says "tell yourself about me," and said stranger proceeds to info-dump their entire backstory into the conversation. People do not talk like that!

The narrative style is also very awkward. Every action a character takes is minutely describe in a dull, monotonous fashion. First Summer takes a shower, then she dresses in a white t-shirt and pants, then she gets in her car and drives down a specific street, then she passes by this restaurant, etc. None of this provides any value to the narrative, and is really demonstrative of the author's lack of professional polish.

I can't say much about the romance itself. I stopped reading the second Alexander geared up for a clumsy, middle-schooler-writing-fanfic style flashback of the time the two leads first met. You can have the best love story ever, but if you have no talent for storytelling, it won't matter.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this review copy in exchange for an honest review.
This is a sapphic romance. I really liked the two main characters. They had vibrant and bold personalities. Their attraction to one another was believable. I love second chance romances, and this one was a good one. I really liked how the story concluded.
About halfway through the story I was not enjoying it because the two love interests have the same fight over and over again. It felt repetitive and I just didn’t like it. But as I said above, I really like how things were wrapped up and resolved.

This book is overwritten from Page 1, and every page thereafter is a slog to get through. Kianna Alexander describes every character, setting, and action in excruciating detail, and having to picture each and every scene exactly as Alexander described it (every single piece of clothing, every single smell, every single dish on the table, etc.) made my head want to explode. There’s too much explanation and repetition to be able to find the plot of the story and connect to it. The dialogue is wooden — if I ever talked to my sister or a friend like this, they’d think I’d been abducted by an alien who was trying to approximate the English language — and fosters no chemistry between the two main characters. This could have been an interesting 50-page story, because there’s an interesting premise buried within, but, as this book is written, it’s just bloated writing and characters I didn’t care about. The characters in this book may not be able to resist each other, but I think you should resist this book.

I received an e-ARC of this Montlake book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

DNF at 43%. The beginning of this was promising. It's a loose Cinderella retelling and I'm the biggest Disney fan. Plus it's sapphic! But it was also slow-burn and closed-door, which I don't like. Some of the writing was also cringy. Thank you to NetGalley and Montlake for an e-ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

I was very excited about this book and I am sad to say it did not meet my expectations. The dialogue was poorly written and included awkward phrasing as well as spoken information that the reader wouldn’t know. It was hard to buy into the romance between the characters due to this and I felt the focus was on the last crush versus focusing on development of the present day relationship. Unfortunately this one missed the mark for me.

I couldn't get through this book at all. The lack of chemistry, and while the story was compelling this is a romance so the chemistry is everything!!! It was just unconvincing, The dialogue was so starchy and I just didn't like it. I think it's an important story, especially s it focuses on gentrification but I think it just simply could have been better

A second chance LGBT love story centering women of color~ Count me in. Although it dragged in parts, Alexander paints a vibrant and really grounded story about two women who are simply meant to be together.Perfect read for pride month

I struggled to write this review because I'm still upset about this book.
I honestly felt so excited when I saw it on netgalley and happy when I received the ARC... Racial representation, sapphic romance, adults MCs (and the cover? so cute!). But it wasn't... good.
The plot was great and the discussions about gentrification as well. My biggests issues were the romance and the dialogue.
The dialogue was too formal and robotic, it didn't sound natural at all. And the romance lacked chemistry between the MCs. Maybe if it was a slow burn it would be better, it felt too rushed and i don't know, they didn't felt compatible.

After trying to read this book multiple times, I've decided that I will not be finishing it. I'm glad I had an opportunity to read an arc and saddened that this book just isn't the right fit for me. I know it has potential and will find readers who love it.

I have such a hit or miss with ff books lately. I wanted to understand more and like this story from more reasons but I found the characters annoying and I got so frustrated by them that I couldn’t carry on reading unfortunately.


Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy

I wanted to love this book, I really did. But it just was not for me.
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The writing was very stilted and did not flow at all, and the dialogue was very flat and didn’t feel realistic. Both of the main characters felt like caricatures and I did not love the romance. Like some reviews mentioned, it did not feel sustainable and their differences seemed more than just petty changes in opinion. The basis of their relationship didn’t make make sense either, after kissing each other once they were madly in love? Not for me.
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I did love the the representation. Two black lesbians in the fore-front was great!
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Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a providing a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

There’s something to be said about readers often and rightly complaining about the lack of stories featuring Black characters that don’t revolve around racism, but not supporting tales that actually centre Black love and their families, heritage, and inner conflicts. Can’t Resist Her quickly unravels a second-chance romance with excellent steamy scenes, great potential for characterisation, an important exploration of gentrification, and a fairly good storyline but doesn’t leave anyone wanting more or with something worth coming back to. Sure, this review might seem like a hypocritical response after the controversial opinion stated above but to be clear: this queer love story featuring Black lesbians does deserve your attention but might not deliver as per expectations.

Summer (Black) and Aiko (Black, Japanese) once kissed at a school dance and have not stopped thinking about each other since. Now, fifteen years later, Summer returns to Austin, Texas and isn’t impressed by the changing community—especially seeing her old high school, which was founded by her grandmother, being demolished for an affordable housing development. Aiko is managing this project and is all for revamping Austin for the betterment of the society. This particular facet of conflicting views, opinions, and visions for the future rises as the major tension between the two—which unfortunately also turns too difficult to get through as both stand too strong on their paths. The flat dialogues and uneven writing add to the list of downsides. Still, individual personalities get reflected well enough and the later half of the book does justice to the sapphic romance.

First of all, thank you NetGalley and Montlake for allowing me to read a digital copy of this book.
Here we have a great romance. We follow two women. First Summer, back to Austin in her childhood neighborhood that is changing because of gentrification. Her goal is to stop the Scholl that her grandmother founded from being destroyed. She wants to protect her legacy. Then we have Aiko, a young and achieving woman and an architect working on the school's project. They both had a crush on each other when they were in high school, and now they meet again, but they are on two different sides.
First I loved the characters. They have their own conviction, their ideas, their strength but also their flaws. And it’s what makes them humans. They also have good chemistry, which is essential in a romance. I liked the topics of legacy and gentrification. What do you want to do with your history, and how do you want to preserve it in a society that is changing really fast. What can you do to help society evolve? Can you be in love with someone that doesn’t think like you? Are you ready to stop having your convictions?
Sometimes I thought that things were moving too fast, but it’s a short romance book, so it’s totally normal too.
Oh yeah, bonus point for the spicy scenes!

I was a bit disappointed in how the two characters lacked so much chemistry. I really enjoyed the writing and was super excited about the premise but the relationship just did not hit and that really upset me. I was hoping for a slam dunk. But I am so so so excited for more books by Kianna Alexander because the prose really was captivating and I can't wait to see the improvement.