Mutual Interest has the bones of something interesting — a period setting, a cast of potentially compelling queer characters, a story about women navigating power and desire in a man's world. But Olivia Wolfgang-Smith tells everything and shows nothing. The result feels less like a novel and more like a detailed screenplay outline: all costume, no passion.
It's genuinely difficult to tell whether any of these characters have feelings. The chemistry between Oscar and Squire is so underwritten it barely registers as ambiguous — it just isn't there. Plot developments are telegraphed well in advance; the moment Rebecca walks into the C&S office, you know exactly where Elias is headed. And then there's Vivian — a survivor, someone with real narrative potential — who gets conjured and then dismissed like smoke. Why create her at all?
The anachronisms don't help. Modern business and marketing sensibilities keep surfacing in a story that's supposed to feel rooted in its period, which compounds the sense that the whole thing is a sketch rather than a fully realized world.
Not romantic. Not sexy. Not emotionally engaging. A frustrating waste of a promising premise.
REVIEW: Mutual Interest by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
RATING: 2-stars
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
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