Angela
i was entertained during the first half of this book and then i lost interest (which you can see in the fact that i've read around 55% on the first day and then it took me two weeks to pick up the book again)
the romance was so annoying. it's like every other paragraph the main character would stare at his lips and think how much she wants to kiss him and then he clears his throat and gives a smug smile as if saying “you've been staring at me and i know what you've been thinking about” ugh. i know they are going to end up together in the end. can we skip this please? if you take out the annoying romance thing you'd lose around a hundred pages and then maybe i wouldn't have been bored by the end of this book. because this book is too bloody long!
but even worse than that, this book is predictable.
the first theory i had (and i had it within the first 10 pages) turned out to be true. and it's not even a good thing because it's so cliche! in fact, i was so thrown off by having this theory that i tried to find smb else to blame throughout the entirety of this book. because surely the reveal is not going to be THAT. but alas, it was. the same with the notes. as soon as the first one appeared i knew who was writing them. there was just no way it could have been smb else.
in the end, this book was a big disappointment
this is seriously one of the cutest things i have ever read
the art style is amazing
i also love that there's no conflict. it's just about a guy falling for another guy, confessing and the happy end. with them being cute and adorable in between. that's honestly quite refreshing. i couldn't stop smiling the whole way through
this was boring af
seriously
i even had trouble remembering the main characters' names. like i'll be in the middle of a scene and henry and ryan would be talking and i would have to try and figure out “ok, so which one of them is the british one and which one is the other one”
plus it was so vanilla. like oh my god, there was a line in a book about their relationship going at the speed of two snails having sex or smth (which is such a cringy line btw) and that's exactly how i felt about the book. not only were we progressing ridiculously slow but everything was... i don't even know, like they are middle-graders in a middle-grade book. and don't get me wrong i like fluff romance as much as i love smut but i could not care less here. i wanted smth, ANYTHING to happen and nothing did. there was even a major event, some kind of conflict in this book. it just builds and builds and builds and then it ends with a “and they lived happily ever after” or some bullshit and i hated its guts.
the other thing that pissed me off was the marriage situation. i don't even wanna go into it now, cause i'm getting angrier the more i think about it. i'm not a fan of a marriage n my romance book in general but wow did this not go well with me
so overall i think this was really boring and pointless and i do not recommend it to anyone
look at me reading the whole book in one sitting
somehow... it was at the same time better and worse than i expected
the thing is i expected to borderline hate the characters from what i heard about them and their dynamic but they were ok, sometimes even cute. mostly annoying but jem saves it.
and i didn't know anything about the story but i expected it to be this intense epic thing... and it wasn't. i would even go as far as to say that nothing happened. it feels very meh. like, for example, every conflict in mortal instruments feels like the end of the world scale. and here it's just five ppl and some evil dude who is just evil for the sake of being evil it seems and oh tessa is suffering which is whatever girl. i don't know. i was just underwhelmed by it
fuck
fuck fuck fuck
what do you give a book when you're torn between a 1 and a 5
like come on
how can smth so wrong and infuriating be so sweet?
ahhhhhh
i don't know
i hated everything about it (you can check my updates, they're proof)
i really wanted to hate this
but i just can't
what is wrong with me? cause there's definitely smth
i need a fucking therapy
this book makes me lower the rating of the first one
i don't know, there's just smth wrong
first of all it's extremely repetitive. i'm sure i can make a list of at least five phrases that were said/thought over and over and over again. it made the reading process tiresome and made me roll my eyes a lot. like yeah, i know that, you've said it like a million times already. can we maybe move the story along?
also, this book made me dislike felicity. a lot
i also did not like how the whole sean situation was handled (not by the author). i was like “wow, you guys are all assholes. so much for all of your comfortable and safe space talk”. like come on! he was literally peer-pressured to go into a scene with someone he was TERRIFIED of. and that guy had the audacity to give sean a fucking ultimatum! seriously?? fuck that guy! (not literally! he should just go get lost).
the daddy/boy thing was different here. i could not tell you how but it stopped being hot and started bothering me more. some subtle differences but they meant a lot as a whole, the dynamic was different
i also did not like how nobody, not one person was on avery's side. it's not that hard to understand the meaning of the words “this is too fast too soon” and “i don't want his money”, guys. are you all imbeciles? i actually agree with avery here. at least from how the relationship was written it's clearly too much sex and not nealy enough of, oh, i don't know, THE ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP???
overall the only thing i actually liked was avery's way of handling the conflict and his solution. no, not even the solution, but the way he went about it. graham actually pissed me off a lot but oh, whatever
oh, and the audiobook just really did not work for me here. so i just read in on my tablet
so, i've just checked and apparently, there's a book about wren and leo which is, first of all, called it! i fucking knew they were gonna be a couple. and second, yes please!
i hate this relationship with a firing passion
here are some of my thoughts while reading this:
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this makes me so angry. this is so not consensual play, this is fucking blackmail
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this is pissing me off too much
if you don't like someone - you don't engage with them. what you DON'T do is break them into someone you want them to be, you asshole!!!
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fuck this shit. this is brainwashing. it just is
“hey sean, i'm gonna do this, cause you need this, i know you do, cause i am a such a smart guy”
no, you fucking don't!
-
-
and so on and so on
i hate this so much you can't even imagine
so... yeah...
well, the first five chapters were good
...
i'll write my full thoughts tomorrow. right now i just wanna go to sleep. this was a major disappointment
.
i've read and seen this plot a hundred times and it always drives me crazy how fast the mc forgives the love interest. maybe it's me. maybe i'm the one who has major trust issues but i value trust so much, i really do. i want to make a point of saying i don't have an issue with this type of conflict. i love this story when it's done well. what i have an issue with here that after all this talk about mc being traumatized and having borderline ptsd the conflict is resolved in seconds. this is my problem. it was too fast. you can't rebuild trust with “i'm sorry” and with “i'm horny and i want him so i guess i'll forgive him”. just no
and btw, i felt like the author was more interested in writing chocolate description than the actual story
16/6/19
well, what do you know, i was actually right. the next book made this one worse. ugh
20/5/19
yeah, ok... wow... hmm, how do i... how do i explain how perfect this was? let me think
not kidding, i've started this three times already. i really wanna write a review cause i feel like i need to, but i have too many irrelevant things in it so i have to delete it and start over again and again
ok, let's break it down by topics
audiobook:
i listened to it on audiobook and it was one of the first instances where i decided to do this with a romance novel (especially one where sex scenes are a major focus of the story). i must say the narration was incredible. if i didn't know i would think there were two ppl narrating this. it was fantastic. and it wasn't awkward sounding. sometimes when you hear a sex scene narrated to you, you can tell the narrator was uncomfortable. if this guy was he was very good at hiding it.
the format:
the fact that this book, as short as it is, managed to tell such a complete story pleasantly surprised me. i typically try to avoid shorter romance books cause they never leave me satisfied with the story. i got the audiobook first, so i didn't realise it was short until i saw it was only three hours long and by that time i was too intrigued to quit.
characters:
the way the characters are written is truly magical. you find out a lot about them and it doesn't feel forced or unnatural at all. the way things would come up in a conversation or in their thoughts felt organic. like yes, that would be smth they say or think in this moment. and i never felt like i was presented with the characters' bio. the characters never felt like they were just playing a role in the main couple's story. just from the way they would say things or act you could picture them perfectly. they were never just one character trait. even the characters that were there for just one scene.
story:
this is where my main objective towards perfection lies. the thing is i've read a short-ish romance story with this kind of plot some time ago this year. we have a couple who explore a bdsm relationship, then we have a conflict centring on breaking trust (which is like the main pillar of a bdsm relashioship). so the resolution to this conflict can't be just “sorry”, trust is valued far more serious than that. and the way the conflict was resolved was good. it felt good. i felt like yes, we can go on from here, i can believe trust is restored. which is such a hard thing to do. and i appreciated that the problem wasn't so severe there was no way you can untangle it in the number of pages we have left but at the same time severe enough so that the characters' reactions didn't seem unnatural or overly dramatic. or out of character even. it was just the perfect balance. and i cannot express to you how happy i was that the resolution was not sex but an actual conversation with addressing the problem. and the fact that there were conversations at all. conversations that actually mattered to the story in more ways than just moving the plot along
now, i want to admit some things that were a little cringy to me. first is the foreshadowing n the first couple of chapters. it was truly painful and unnecessary. i didn't need it cause the story is quite short and it was basically foreshadowing the story itself as a whole which started in the very next chapter. and it felt like a wink-wink from the author and i hate this.
and the punishment thing at the end... it's just not my kink personally (what they did, not the punishing play on its own), so that's just my thing and not the fault of the book
oh, yeah, and be aware of insta-love if it bothers you. never bothers me, so...
oh, and obviously, this was so fucking hot!! wink-wink
update: oh, fuck, the next books are about them. i thought it was like a series of connected couples. now i'm scared. i don't need a second book to this.
it was sweet. but i know one thing for sure – if i was the one writing it, it would have been less... that. i wanted more of everything, in general, i wanted more intensity. actually, what i realise is that i wanted the story to be aged up. not only character-wise but also reader-wise. this was a coming of age story more than anything and i wanted this to be a romance story. and i know it was my fault and that maybe i should just not read books set in high-school anymore since the major thing i get let down by is the lack of certain... i don't know, raw emotion, intensity. i'm sorry, but i don't believe in this ending one bit. i can see clear as day sam coming across travis in new york or coming back to landon at some point. jamie is 15 and he just stepped into the art world and he's gonna meet a lot of new ppl. there's no way this is the end of this story
and i would want it to be longer too. it needs to explore the relationships deeper. we spent basically less than a week with travis and they already felt like soulmates. it's just not believable.
you know what this can be? this can be a very good CW show. and as a book, it was fine, sweet, unsatisfying.
read my updates for more insight
(but since i know nobody will bother to do so i'm just gonna quote myself here in order to address the “cheating” thing so here we go –
page 268 - 76.14% “see, this is why it's stupid. you don't own another person. you just don't. even if you kiss them and go on a date with them. unless you talked and decided to be exclusive, you don't have the right to be angry about it (especially since nothing happened!!) so it's not a loophole. urgh, i hate this. ppl should stop treating each other as properties. nobody owes anything to anybody!”)
Merged review:
it was sweet. but i know one thing for sure – if i was the one writing it, it would have been less... that. i wanted more of everything, in general, i wanted more intensity. actually, what i realise is that i wanted the story to be aged up. not only character-wise but also reader-wise. this was a coming of age story more than anything and i wanted this to be a romance story. and i know it was my fault and that maybe i should just not read books set in high-school anymore since the major thing i get let down by is the lack of certain... i don't know, raw emotion, intensity. i'm sorry, but i don't believe in this ending one bit. i can see clear as day sam coming across travis in new york or coming back to landon at some point. jamie is 15 and he just stepped into the art world and he's gonna meet a lot of new ppl. there's no way this is the end of this story
and i would want it to be longer too. it needs to explore the relationships deeper. we spent basically less than a week with travis and they already felt like soulmates. it's just not believable.
you know what this can be? this can be a very good CW show. and as a book, it was fine, sweet, unsatisfying.
read my updates for more insight
(but since i know nobody will bother to do so i'm just gonna quote myself here in order to address the “cheating” thing so here we go –
page 268 - 76.14% “see, this is why it's stupid. you don't own another person. you just don't. even if you kiss them and go on a date with them. unless you talked and decided to be exclusive, you don't have the right to be angry about it (especially since nothing happened!!) so it's not a loophole. urgh, i hate this. ppl should stop treating each other as properties. nobody owes anything to anybody!”)
