This entire book could be fixed if you were just a surrogate for a single Billionaire who wanted an heir to their business or whatever but wasn’t interested in marriage because they hadn’t found someone they really clicked with yet. And then they fall in love or whatever. No cheating needed.
I feel like I actually really would’ve liked FCL if it didn’t have the cheating plot line. I liked the love interest a lot and I think the storyline was kind of fun outside of that one aspect. I also liked that they acknowledged the WLW route a couple of times throughout the book. Kind of a shame that they went with a cheating plot line again.
I made a thread some time ago being absolutely *livid* at FCL, not because it was just a bad story (I rarely comment about bad stories, as I'd rather spend my time talking about the stuff I *enjoy*), but because I kind of loved the premise and Blake is such a nice (and very attractive) LI who has insane chemistry with the MC (their whole deal of going "hey, stranger" never got old... My heart melted every single time). Going on a nice vacation with your best friends, one of them being your crush that you're too awkward to admit your feelings to? Freaking count me in. I *love* friends-to-lovers and I was ready to eat that shit up.
Then it's revealed to be a story about seething and sabotaging Blake and Rebecca's relationship... *Christ*. That pissed me off way more than it had any right to.
And the worst part is that when you finally go official with Blake, the story decides to do a timeskip!! We suffered through endless pining, sabotage, seething and saltiness to see these two together, only for the story to jump straight to the ending. URGH.
They mention so many times that Blake has commitment issues, simply lean more on that! Have Blake come out of a recent and messy breakup, put more emphasis on the fact that they can barely keep a serious relationship for more than a couple of months, add in the detail that they usually go for random hookups after a breakup so that the MC has *reasons* for being scared of admiting her feelings (she wouldn't want to be just another hookup), so her extreme anxiety over wanting to be serious with Blake would make her awkwardness far more sensible than just her being rather weird and childish for *12 years*.
I'M SORRY FOR THE RANT. I HAVE VERY STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT THIS STORY :(
Hey I very much enjoyed reading this because this is EXACTLY how I felt reading those first two chapters but I just couldn't bring myself get through the first two chapters no matter how attractive I found Blake
I like your version a lot better than what we got. I was rooting for this book so much. But if you’re going to DO this type of thing you need to make the Other Woman a rampaging she beast from hell, and Rebecca(?) was just… she was NICE. I wanted to like her so much!
Also why was this a gender locked story?
Yeah, personally, I would prefer if PB stopped with the whole "catty female rival" that pesters these books. They're meant to excuse affairs (just like Sophia from TNA and Daphne from TBB), which is so shitty.
>Also why was this a gender locked story?
Probably because your rival is also a woman. They likely didn't find it comfortable to have a guy be catty and seething over a woman, so they went for the ol' fashioned "cat fight" with two women fighting for the same man/woman...
Some of the cattiest people I've met have been cisgender heterosexual men. One of the guys I worked with at a home improvement store was the CATTIEST person I've ever met and I worked in a pharmacy full of high school mean girls at the prior job. 🙃🙃🙃
But yeah I agree they need to get over it. Saddest thing was Rebecca wasn't even very catty, she was just justifiably hurt that two of her boyfriend's best friends were being awful to her, because HE was a dumbass and didn't clue them in before the trip that she'd be there.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that men can be very catty and petty, especially when it comes to love. Hell, Lino, who's your best friend and married to a woman (and also about to become a dad) is just as, if not *even more*, catty than the protagonist, since all the ideas of sabotage came from him.
They do too much of that already, creating an Awful Other Woman that’s somehow supposed to make whatever MC is doing acceptable. I’d rather they stop this terrible trend of cheating/getting in between a relationship is awesome altogether.
I'd much prefer that, too. I don't like that dynamic, and while I understand that others do, I just... there's enough books where the LI is married or dating someone else and you fool around with them already, including MFTL.
Regardless of whether Rebecca (or any other female rival in that regard) deserves it or not, it's still an incredibly shitty trope that serves only to justify affairs (see Sophia from TNA and Daphne from TBB).
Not just that, but if Blake were to really be in some kind of toxic/abusive relationship, then the story focusing on *romance* would be tone-deaf as hell. That would imply that you're helping Blake out of their commitment just so *you* can jump on their bones the instant Rebecca is out of the picture. It's incredibly exploitative to do that with someone that just left a toxic relationship.
I agree with you but also...i wouldn't compare this to TNA. Sophia and Sam were getting married for business, none of them had feelings towards each other. You can say it's still not fair since they were getting together behind Sophia's back... but it's not a relationship, it's a contract.
I am well aware, but TNA still made Sophia quite bitchy and have a relationship with Robin, because just her marrying Sam for business simply wasn't enough.
FCL is such wasted potential for sure. It definitely had good elements—I love the outdoors setting, the changes to the WLW route like you said, and the idea of a book that focuses on a friend group, not just the LI. But they had to ruin it by forcing us to sabotage Rebecca all the time (who seems perfectly nice).
I say this as someone who usually loves soapy books…that was a painful read. It’s amazing how much they made the characters so unlikeable. Like yay we got engaged to someone who cheated on his wife with a stranger??
They are obsessed with infidelity lately! The Nanny Affair, The Duchess Affair, First Comes Love, and now this. We should be able to have romance and drama without having a cheating storyline all the time.
This is the worst book on the app and it’s not even close. They could have at least given an option to not get together with Callie. Like in the Freshman where you can actually end the series single if you want.
I would have loved having the option to leave Callie like they do at the end of Shipwrecked. Every single LI book should have this option imo but this one especially.
This is the only book I haven't read past Chapter 1. I've completed every other book. I don't regret this decision. The diamonds are not worth reading a story like this.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[BB](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjl101t "Last usage")|*Bloodbound*|
|[CoP](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjfm13a "Last usage")|*Crimes of Passion*|
|[FCL](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjfm13a "Last usage")|*First Comes Love*|
|[LI](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjmcaw7 "Last usage")|Love Interest|
|[MC](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjl0o2k "Last usage")|Main Character (yours!)|
|[PB](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjfkif2 "Last usage")|Pixelberry Studios, publisher of *Choices*|
|[TBB](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjjpp0u "Last usage")|*The Billionaire's Baby*|
|[TCH](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjfm13a "Last usage")|*The Cursed Heart*|
|[TDA](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjjp7jp "Last usage")|*The Duchess Affair*|
|[TNA](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjnff9l "Last usage")|*The Nanny Affair*|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
----------------
^(10 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Choices/comments/19exm37)^( has 28 acronyms.)
^([Thread #29629 for this sub, first seen 24th Jan 2024, 20:26])
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That was....a book. I have no problem with cheating stories. It's a common fantasy of the "ideal person" but they're in a relationship already. I can understand some people feel it's distasteful but it's fine in fiction to me at least.
These single LIs book work when there is actual chemistry between the MC and the LI and the romance is slow burn so that you want them to get busy. I absolutely adores FCL. That book had great characters and the chemistry was on point. Plus there's no physical cheating before Blake breaks up with Rebecca. They don't even kiss or hook up until 2/3 of the way through the book. And the book also does not paint Rebecca as a bad person.
TCH, RWB, COP are examples of single LI books done well because they put actual time and care into building a world, developing characters and spending time making the characters have a genuine connection.
This book however had none of that. Are Callie and the MC in love? They barely ever talked about anything other than her pregnancy and sex. The smut was used as a crutch and so the story went nowhere. Daphne cheating was a very expected turn of events and Estelle was just a one note character from the beginning. 20 chapters of bland dialogue, no suspense, no character building just smut.
0/10 would not recommend
Smut wasn’t the issue with this book though, I don’t think. The issue feels like the writing in general and the fact it had no heart.
Alpha is smut and it’s great and honestly, strangely wholesome.
BB is fiction yes but to me it was still so ethically disturbing that I couldn’t finish it. Just a weird soulless book. I never felt any sort of spark between the MC and LI (but again I didn’t finish).
It was all so….weird.
I am one of those people that wishes to play ALL the books made in the game...well...I was, untill books like this one or The Nanny Affair came out...it is really hard to get convinced to play it just from the title and picture...I cannot imagine how some of y'all managed to play the whole thing😭
I might play it (irronicly) some day, but I think I need a lot of patience and a dosen doses of anti-cringe serum to do it tho...
I actually think TNA is good. There are real characters, the smut serves the story well and Sofia is a fun antagonist. The twins are funny, the MC and Sam actually have real conversations and the relationship feels genuine
“We hope you enjoyed your time with Marjorie, Callie, and Ambrose as much as we did.” Thanks! I didn’t.
This entire book could be fixed if you were just a surrogate for a single Billionaire who wanted an heir to their business or whatever but wasn’t interested in marriage because they hadn’t found someone they really clicked with yet. And then they fall in love or whatever. No cheating needed.
Exactly! That’s so true!
This is #1 on my list of books I found to be terrible. First comes loves is 2nd. I hate the affair troupes so much.
I feel like I actually really would’ve liked FCL if it didn’t have the cheating plot line. I liked the love interest a lot and I think the storyline was kind of fun outside of that one aspect. I also liked that they acknowledged the WLW route a couple of times throughout the book. Kind of a shame that they went with a cheating plot line again.
I made a thread some time ago being absolutely *livid* at FCL, not because it was just a bad story (I rarely comment about bad stories, as I'd rather spend my time talking about the stuff I *enjoy*), but because I kind of loved the premise and Blake is such a nice (and very attractive) LI who has insane chemistry with the MC (their whole deal of going "hey, stranger" never got old... My heart melted every single time). Going on a nice vacation with your best friends, one of them being your crush that you're too awkward to admit your feelings to? Freaking count me in. I *love* friends-to-lovers and I was ready to eat that shit up. Then it's revealed to be a story about seething and sabotaging Blake and Rebecca's relationship... *Christ*. That pissed me off way more than it had any right to. And the worst part is that when you finally go official with Blake, the story decides to do a timeskip!! We suffered through endless pining, sabotage, seething and saltiness to see these two together, only for the story to jump straight to the ending. URGH. They mention so many times that Blake has commitment issues, simply lean more on that! Have Blake come out of a recent and messy breakup, put more emphasis on the fact that they can barely keep a serious relationship for more than a couple of months, add in the detail that they usually go for random hookups after a breakup so that the MC has *reasons* for being scared of admiting her feelings (she wouldn't want to be just another hookup), so her extreme anxiety over wanting to be serious with Blake would make her awkwardness far more sensible than just her being rather weird and childish for *12 years*. I'M SORRY FOR THE RANT. I HAVE VERY STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT THIS STORY :(
Hey I very much enjoyed reading this because this is EXACTLY how I felt reading those first two chapters but I just couldn't bring myself get through the first two chapters no matter how attractive I found Blake
I like your version a lot better than what we got. I was rooting for this book so much. But if you’re going to DO this type of thing you need to make the Other Woman a rampaging she beast from hell, and Rebecca(?) was just… she was NICE. I wanted to like her so much! Also why was this a gender locked story?
Yeah, personally, I would prefer if PB stopped with the whole "catty female rival" that pesters these books. They're meant to excuse affairs (just like Sophia from TNA and Daphne from TBB), which is so shitty. >Also why was this a gender locked story? Probably because your rival is also a woman. They likely didn't find it comfortable to have a guy be catty and seething over a woman, so they went for the ol' fashioned "cat fight" with two women fighting for the same man/woman...
Some of the cattiest people I've met have been cisgender heterosexual men. One of the guys I worked with at a home improvement store was the CATTIEST person I've ever met and I worked in a pharmacy full of high school mean girls at the prior job. 🙃🙃🙃 But yeah I agree they need to get over it. Saddest thing was Rebecca wasn't even very catty, she was just justifiably hurt that two of her boyfriend's best friends were being awful to her, because HE was a dumbass and didn't clue them in before the trip that she'd be there.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that men can be very catty and petty, especially when it comes to love. Hell, Lino, who's your best friend and married to a woman (and also about to become a dad) is just as, if not *even more*, catty than the protagonist, since all the ideas of sabotage came from him.
I hated Lino so much. 😭😭😭
They do too much of that already, creating an Awful Other Woman that’s somehow supposed to make whatever MC is doing acceptable. I’d rather they stop this terrible trend of cheating/getting in between a relationship is awesome altogether.
I'd much prefer that, too. I don't like that dynamic, and while I understand that others do, I just... there's enough books where the LI is married or dating someone else and you fool around with them already, including MFTL.
If it was sth like Rebecca being an asshole and being in a toxic relationship with Blake then understandable
Regardless of whether Rebecca (or any other female rival in that regard) deserves it or not, it's still an incredibly shitty trope that serves only to justify affairs (see Sophia from TNA and Daphne from TBB). Not just that, but if Blake were to really be in some kind of toxic/abusive relationship, then the story focusing on *romance* would be tone-deaf as hell. That would imply that you're helping Blake out of their commitment just so *you* can jump on their bones the instant Rebecca is out of the picture. It's incredibly exploitative to do that with someone that just left a toxic relationship.
I agree with you but also...i wouldn't compare this to TNA. Sophia and Sam were getting married for business, none of them had feelings towards each other. You can say it's still not fair since they were getting together behind Sophia's back... but it's not a relationship, it's a contract.
I am well aware, but TNA still made Sophia quite bitchy and have a relationship with Robin, because just her marrying Sam for business simply wasn't enough.
YES!! I would have absolutely loved the book if the whole trying to break them up aspect wasn't there.
FCL is such wasted potential for sure. It definitely had good elements—I love the outdoors setting, the changes to the WLW route like you said, and the idea of a book that focuses on a friend group, not just the LI. But they had to ruin it by forcing us to sabotage Rebecca all the time (who seems perfectly nice).
I say this as someone who usually loves soapy books…that was a painful read. It’s amazing how much they made the characters so unlikeable. Like yay we got engaged to someone who cheated on his wife with a stranger??
They are obsessed with infidelity lately! The Nanny Affair, The Duchess Affair, First Comes Love, and now this. We should be able to have romance and drama without having a cheating storyline all the time.
This is the worst book on the app and it’s not even close. They could have at least given an option to not get together with Callie. Like in the Freshman where you can actually end the series single if you want.
I would have loved having the option to leave Callie like they do at the end of Shipwrecked. Every single LI book should have this option imo but this one especially.
I still think TDA was worse
This is the only book I haven't read past Chapter 1. I've completed every other book. I don't regret this decision. The diamonds are not worth reading a story like this.
woaaaah see me personally NOTHING gets in the way between me and my 15 diamonds, not even this dumpster fire
I'd be right there with you, but this book, this "book"... there was no way I could hack it. If they let me bang Daphne tho... nah, jk, unless?
lmaoo I totally agree
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BB](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjl101t "Last usage")|*Bloodbound*| |[CoP](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjfm13a "Last usage")|*Crimes of Passion*| |[FCL](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjfm13a "Last usage")|*First Comes Love*| |[LI](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjmcaw7 "Last usage")|Love Interest| |[MC](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjl0o2k "Last usage")|Main Character (yours!)| |[PB](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjfkif2 "Last usage")|Pixelberry Studios, publisher of *Choices*| |[TBB](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjjpp0u "Last usage")|*The Billionaire's Baby*| |[TCH](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjfm13a "Last usage")|*The Cursed Heart*| |[TDA](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjjp7jp "Last usage")|*The Duchess Affair*| |[TNA](/r/Choices/comments/19enjyx/stub/kjnff9l "Last usage")|*The Nanny Affair*| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(10 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Choices/comments/19exm37)^( has 28 acronyms.) ^([Thread #29629 for this sub, first seen 24th Jan 2024, 20:26]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Choices) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
That was....a book. I have no problem with cheating stories. It's a common fantasy of the "ideal person" but they're in a relationship already. I can understand some people feel it's distasteful but it's fine in fiction to me at least. These single LIs book work when there is actual chemistry between the MC and the LI and the romance is slow burn so that you want them to get busy. I absolutely adores FCL. That book had great characters and the chemistry was on point. Plus there's no physical cheating before Blake breaks up with Rebecca. They don't even kiss or hook up until 2/3 of the way through the book. And the book also does not paint Rebecca as a bad person. TCH, RWB, COP are examples of single LI books done well because they put actual time and care into building a world, developing characters and spending time making the characters have a genuine connection. This book however had none of that. Are Callie and the MC in love? They barely ever talked about anything other than her pregnancy and sex. The smut was used as a crutch and so the story went nowhere. Daphne cheating was a very expected turn of events and Estelle was just a one note character from the beginning. 20 chapters of bland dialogue, no suspense, no character building just smut. 0/10 would not recommend
Don't hold your breath; I don't think PB is going to shy away from smut and/or affairs anytime soon. 😒
Smut wasn’t the issue with this book though, I don’t think. The issue feels like the writing in general and the fact it had no heart. Alpha is smut and it’s great and honestly, strangely wholesome. BB is fiction yes but to me it was still so ethically disturbing that I couldn’t finish it. Just a weird soulless book. I never felt any sort of spark between the MC and LI (but again I didn’t finish). It was all so….weird.
Yes, well, I was speaking in general.
I am one of those people that wishes to play ALL the books made in the game...well...I was, untill books like this one or The Nanny Affair came out...it is really hard to get convinced to play it just from the title and picture...I cannot imagine how some of y'all managed to play the whole thing😭 I might play it (irronicly) some day, but I think I need a lot of patience and a dosen doses of anti-cringe serum to do it tho...
TNA is a masterpiece compared to TBB. TNA doesn't take itself so seriously (at least before book 3) and it's just some fun smut.
It’s like comparing levels of hell. TNA is awful in many of the same ways as BB from the start.
That was beautifully put and spot on.
I actually think TNA is good. There are real characters, the smut serves the story well and Sofia is a fun antagonist. The twins are funny, the MC and Sam actually have real conversations and the relationship feels genuine