The Central Park Pact Series is a romance series comprising three books: Passion on Park Avenue, Love on Lexington Avenue, and Marriage on Madison Avenue. They center on three women—Naomi, Claire, and Audrey—who were all duped by the same man, Brayden Hayes. Claire is the wife, who believed her husband was faithful, if absent. Audrey was the girlfriend, who believed he was going through a divorce and would marry her someday. Naomi was the mistress, who thought Brayden was single, and having a fling. All three find out the truth when Brayden dies in a freak accident. The wife, girlfriend, and mistress connect and become unlikely friends, striving to protect each other in their future romantic endeavors. This is not the most original idea, it has predecessors in multiple Hollywood blockbusters, but so do a lot of great romance novels. Unfortunately, these are not great.

“White feminism” has been a controversial term. To boil it down, white feminism is ‘one size-fits-all’ feminism, where middle-class white women are the mould that others must fit in order to have equality. This naturally excludes marginalized groups and makes feminism the property of white women. When I picked up the first book, I was a little thrown. The book is billed as the story of self-made Naomi, who is an accessories magnate, falling for her once mortal enemy Oliver, a charming old-money fellow with a connection to Naomi’s working-poor roots. Naomi is incredibly likable, she’s funny, confident, and driven, the true independent woman with a heart of gold. Out of the three women, she’s unapologetically raunchy, and definitely the most relatable. That’s why the moments of “ugh, white women” stood out so strongly.

The first scene the women have together is when they all ditch Brayden’s funeral, and accidentally cross paths in Central Park. They recognize each other, and at first, things are believably awkward. Claire, the wife, says that they probably have nothing in common, trying to dismiss the others. Naomi comments that they were sleeping with the same guy, and are wearing the same shoes. The shoes in question are Christian Louboutin, the ones with the red soles. They retail for between seven and nine hundred dollars. They all then realize that Brayden (lazily) gave them all the same watch as a gift. This crystalizes their bond, and they leave the park to get a drink and shop.

I haven’t made any friends by accidentally sleeping with a married man, but I’m not sure that this is entirely how it would go. Romantic fiction requires you to suspend your disbelief more than a little, but I find it difficult to imagine that three women who discover that they have been betrayed only require a few commonalities to become inseparable. Also, apparently, you only need a couple hundred dollars to buy the right shoes to prove you have class.

Romance novels do have a serious intersectionality problem, that’s not new. There is great stuff out there, but it’s discouraging when the just okay books make such waves. Passion on Park Avenue, the first of the three, is very obviously the best. Naomi has great chemistry with her leading man, and her background makes her relatable and sympathetic. It’s all downhill from there- Claire and Audrey have their upsides, but their books are forgettable and bland.

Claire falls for the contractor she hires to renovate her home after her husband’s death and ends up getting remarried. She is rich, and doesn’t work. Her great fear is that she’s boring and that her husband was seeking something she didn’t have in his extra-marital affairs. She ends up starting a calligraphy business, which is cool. One nice thing is that Claire doesn’t want children, which is not normalized in popular fiction. None of her friends tell her she’ll change her mind, and no one implies that her marriage is empty without offspring. It’s a good look, and pretty much the only one in the whole novel. Claire’s big revelation is essentially that she should do what she wants to do, and then she does. Not exactly thrilling.

Audrey, the final woman, believes that she doesn’t deserve the happy ending she wants (marriage, family, children) because she ruined Claire’s happiness. She is an Instagram influencer, and has a longstanding platonic friendship with Clarke, her best guy friend. They enter into a faux engagement to avoid media speculation about Audrey’s love life, and to put a stop to Clarke’s interfering mother’s machinations. Then, within a few months, they progress to planning a wedding, deciding on a marriage of convenience, and finally getting romantically involved. Then, the cheapest trick in the book: Clarke’s father offers him the top job at their family company if Clarke marries Audrey. Audrey overhears a conversation about this, believes that Clarke has betrayed her, and pulls a runaway bride. Clarke chases after her, and they declare their love and get married.

While Claire’s book was a tad dull, this one was fast and sloppy. Audrey is another rich woman, who is convinced that despite being gorgeous and smart, she will never find love. She’s not even thirty and she thinks her life is over because she was duped by some dude. Audrey has a lovely, supportive family, great friends, and a thriving business. There are a number of dropped plotlines in the book, including a number of characters who are introduced and promptly forgotten for no apparent reason. The worst part of the book isn’t the cliches or the out of character actions, it’s the naivete of the two main characters. Audrey, despite being ostensibly smart, claims that she works really hard to create content and work on her brand. That’s possible, certainly, but she wouldn’t be able to be an influencer if she wasn’t born rich. She has an audience that likes to see the blueblood lifestyle, and she capitalizes on that desire. No matter how hard she works, Audrey’s success comes from her parents’ wealth. Clarke, on the other hand, works for his father’s company and feels entitled to the CEO position. He freely admits that he doesn’t work as hard as his father’s other choice, but he helped the company evolve and survive the tech boom, so he feels like he’s earned it. Clarke feels as though his parents are both targeting him, testing him, both at work and socially. Clarke seems to fail to grasp that, no matter what work he’s done at his family’s company, just having the job in the first place was the result of nepotism. The book is completely unaware of the privilege of the main characters, and that makes it difficult to get through.  

It’s this very lack of self-awareness that makes the series so hard to swallow. All three heroines drink fancy cocktails and buy twenty-dollar cupcakes with impunity. Naomi buys property twice within the same year, in Manhattan. Audrey plans a wedding at the Plaza hotel, and Claire lives rent-free in an inherited brownstone. These women lack relatability because of their champagne problems. They’re unlucky in love, but so are regular people. It’s difficult to sympathize with their issues because there are no stakes. They are all independently wealthy under forty, something most readers won’t find relatable. Not all characters have to be relatable- I don’t have magic hair but I cried watching Tangled. Characters have to have compelling problems and rich internal lives. These characters are all shiny exterior, no twisty insides, like a plastic easter egg.     

If these books were your only reference for New York, you wouldn’t think a single person of color lived there. There’s a passing reference to a gay couple, but neither of them is a speaking character. New York City might be the most diverse, exciting place in the United States, and there isn’t a single character who isn’t lily-white. When the most diverse character in your series is a red-headed white woman, you’re in trouble. These books are a light read, and not intolerable, but they’re a complete failure in the evolving world of romance. The heroines, who are supposed to be in their twenties and thirties, sound like middle-aged divorces with drinking problems. These books perpetuate the same problems from media in the 2000s- they are unrepentantly white, uniformly heterosexual, and ignorant in places. I’m frankly suspicious that the author has never been to New York. If you watched Sex and the City, you basically got the gist, but it’s somehow whiter. Romance can do better.

– Rachel Finston