NGL there was a lot of cringe on certain spots but I binged the entire thing in less then the 7 hours it was supposed to be. It feels like it was a strange read, but it was really good and I love a good vengeance ending ( )

3.25 ( )

2.75 stars ( )

It started as Beauty and the Beast, suddenly I felt I was watching Avatar, then it was Twilight and at the end Anne Rice.
Was it bad? No. But it wasn't the best book I read in this vibe, kind of cliche and the sex scenes were really bland, but it's ok overall and I'll read the next one. ( )

I didn't really enjoy this. It's definitely not fully a bad book, that's why it's getting two stars, but it definitely had some issues.

The major problem for me was that I didn't believe the romance. I didn't think the characters spent enough time together developing their relationship so when they said they loved each other, I didn't understand why. The point of a romance novel is to see two people falling in love. That's what makes the moment they admit they love each other so cathartic. There was not enough build-up in this story to make that meaningful and because the stakes of the relationship are so high, this caused the entire premise to fall apart for me.

I was also bothered by the writing style. This is written in a very deliberate style. I think the author is going for a sort of lordly and high-minded style but it just seemed very stilted and the sentences were over-long. It's perfectly fine to have a very specific writing style but I still want the sentences to be well constructed and I want the characters to still sound like people. I think it's possible not a single contraction was used in this book. It is full of "it is" and "I am" and "did not." In this case, the writing style actually took away from the relationship to me because they spoke like this to each other and that made them seem really distant and overly formal and made it hard to believe they were in love. Also, while I thought the sex scenes were mostly fine and not too cringy, this line

"He opened the bedside drawer and withdrew the only liquid that made sex with him possible."

Is outrageously bad.

This is also a fantasy romance but it definitely doesn't have the world-building to back that up. I wish this story had either turned away from any type of world-building and only discussed the relationship or was a little longer and had a bit more development of the world before Jak and Marius meet. The way it is, I feel like the world-building takes away from the romance and the romance takes away from the world-building and we ended up with not enough of either.

This book was still ultimately easy to read. Two stars is my rating for "it was okay" and this was okay. I think with the help of some more drafting, proofreaders, and an editor, this author could improve a lot. The makings of an interesting story and relationship are here but the pieces didn't completely come together in this book. ( )