it had to be you by susan elizabeth phillips

When I think about reading It Had to Be You I'm reminded of that terrible, scornful, old-school, Victorian set down- that someone is no better than they should be, meaning they're lacking but that's to be expected because of who they are or where they come from. For all that’s wrong with 2019, this book made me incredibly happy that it’s not 1994 and that I could leave that world by closing the book. Neither progressive nor fully reactionary, just deeply unsettling. And yet it still threw me for a bit- the gender dynamics aren’t pretty. It shouldn’t have been a huge surprise that the sexual politics made my head spin. So I should have been prepared for what a contemporary romance set in the testosterone heavy world of the NFL might look like in that time. That’s all to say it was a heady time, right on the cusp of some sort of transition in gender and racial politics. It was also the second year of the Clinton presidency, two years before Monica Lewinsky burst into public consciousness, and, perhaps most important, just a few years after “Backlash” told of a powerful postfeminist reactionary political wave sweeping across America. Simpson’s ill-fated low speed chase/attempt to evade arrest for killing her. This pioneering, popular and well-received sports romance was published in 1994, the year of Nicole Brown-Simpson’s death, and former football superstar O.J. But reading It Had to Be You was an unsettling, frustrating experience for me.

It's one of Eloisa James's favorite books and appears on many best of all time lists. Since this summer I've been making a conscious effort to better understand the genre I've been so engrossed by recently by reading some of the best known books in the romance canon, and It Had to Be You came highly recommended. Love in the Time of Slick Willy, the Juice and the Donald. It Had to Be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It had to be you by susan elizabeth phillips