by Elizabeth Oshel (link)
Genre het, romance
Pairings Taylor/OFC
Length 15 chapters
Status Completed (first in an unfinished trilogy)
Ah, the early days of hanfic — and I mean the really early days. This is one of the first stories, dating from that first summer/fall of our fic content. I apologize for the pun. I guess it’s the lofty literary reference in the story’s title that has me inspired to poke a little fun. I highly doubt a teen romance fic is going to live up to Shakespearean allusions, but you never know.
I’ve always heard about the ubiquitous “girl is forced to move to Tulsa” plot, but I’ve read very few of them. Right away, I can tell that Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow is going to be one of them, and while it may very well be the first, I don’t think it’s the best. The writing is unsurprisingly juvenile, which I hate to judge it for, since I’m sure the author was quite young, but it does still make it difficult to read now. Grammar aside, all the descriptions of clothes and other things meant to seem “cool” to the readers, and the constant Author’s Notes just make me roll my eyes.
And the plot? It’s your typical teenage romance, just as I expected it to be. There’s nothing to recommend it, but nothing horrible about it either; it’s just simple and boring in the way that only wide eyed, innocent authors can manage. The Shakespeare references are, of course, just silly. Like any other teenage author, Elizabeth only seems to notice the romantic bits of the story and ignore the drama and tragedy… which also happen to be what her story lacks. The fact that she did at least have a taste for literature makes me happy; perhaps she should have waited a while before trying her hand at hanfic and the results would have been better.
Review by Bethany (website)