Roisin
Why did I read this?! How did I read this?!
This was...utterly bad! And yet, I read all one thousand pages of nonsense, so who's the real clown here?!
Let me get this straight (pun NOT intended), this book is weird. As in, I am half-convinced that a cat in heat wrote this! I'm not even gonna touch on the problematic aspects. Even at its most nonproblematic, this book lacks a basic understanding of how humans function, both socially and anatomically. Seriously! I had so many moments when I would pause reading and just stare into the middle distance, as if waiting for someone to materialise out of thin air and confirm my confusion at the ludicrousness of what I had just read! A character jumps out of the fourth floor and lands on his feet?! The snakes open doors?! The sex barely makes sense, like these guys should be in a hospital, I am worried for their physical well-being. It's just so weird.
I don't recommend this book to anyone, honestly. Only read it if you have a morbid curiosity to see why everyone says this is bad.
I will admit, it had its moments. But for the most part, this felt like a book written about gay men for the straight male gaze! I think it just feeds into a very testosterone-filled idea of physical over emotional relationship. And...okay I can't say that because there are emotions and the characters think a lot about how much they love each other but they rarely if ever say it out loud. And that seems like such an annoyingly guy thing to me. Why would a woman write men like this?! We can't even trust a woman to write a proper man, anymore?! There was hardly any emotions there. The sex is weird and wild in a very unrealistic way, the men are all so macho and unwilling to show proper emotions...it's like who was supposed to enjoy this?! There's very little emotional communication in the book and that is the most frustrating edging it puts the reader through. Because the main couple actually work so well together but they hardly ever talk to each other like mature people and that's so frustrating. So whenever they express the bare minimum of emotions or show any softness towards each other, I was eating it up like a starving man. Those moments are rare, however, and you really have to work through the rest of this book to get to them. For the most part, the sex scenes, which I believe are supposed to be the main attraction point of this book, are bland or mechanical. They get wild, but without a proper emotional anchor, they don't mean much. This gets better slightly as the book progresses. Some of the scenes work, but there's also such an uncalled-for violence in many of these scenes that they end up ruining the mood, anyway.
I would say this: the inherent illogicality of this book aside, the scheming is actually top-notch! These are 100% diabolical people who properly screw people over with 3D chess mindgames and gambles, and it kind of makes sense in that odd way that things make sense in nonsensical situations...you know?!
So this was not good. Not really. But it had its moments. Don't read it. Just watch the show instead...and know that every illogical thing from the show is directly the book's fault!
Why did I read this?! How did I read this?!
This was...utterly bad! And yet, I read all one thousand pages of nonsense, so who's the real clown here?!
Let me get this straight (pun NOT intended), this book is weird. As in, I am half-convinced that a cat in heat wrote this! I'm not even gonna touch on the problematic aspects. Even at its most nonproblematic, this book lacks a basic understanding of how humans function, both socially and anatomically. Seriously! I had so many moments when I would pause reading and just stare into the middle distance, as if waiting for someone to materialise out of thin air and confirm my confusion at the ludicrousness of what I had just read! A character jumps out of the fourth floor and lands on his feet?! The snakes open doors?! The sex barely makes sense, like these guys should be in a hospital, I am worried for their physical well-being. It's just so weird.
I don't recommend this book to anyone, honestly. Only read it if you have a morbid curiosity to see why everyone says this is bad.
I will admit, it had its moments. But for the most part, this felt like a book written about gay men for the straight male gaze! I think it just feeds into a very testosterone-filled idea of physical over emotional relationship. And...okay I can't say that because there are emotions and the characters think a lot about how much they love each other but they rarely if ever say it out loud. And that seems like such an annoyingly guy thing to me. Why would a woman write men like this?! We can't even trust a woman to write a proper man, anymore?! There was hardly any emotions there. The sex is weird and wild in a very unrealistic way, the men are all so macho and unwilling to show proper emotions...it's like who was supposed to enjoy this?! There's very little emotional communication in the book and that is the most frustrating edging it puts the reader through. Because the main couple actually work so well together but they hardly ever talk to each other like mature people and that's so frustrating. So whenever they express the bare minimum of emotions or show any softness towards each other, I was eating it up like a starving man. Those moments are rare, however, and you really have to work through the rest of this book to get to them. For the most part, the sex scenes, which I believe are supposed to be the main attraction point of this book, are bland or mechanical. They get wild, but without a proper emotional anchor, they don't mean much. This gets better slightly as the book progresses. Some of the scenes work, but there's also such an uncalled-for violence in many of these scenes that they end up ruining the mood, anyway.
I would say this: the inherent illogicality of this book aside, the scheming is actually top-notch! These are 100% diabolical people who properly screw people over with 3D chess mindgames and gambles, and it kind of makes sense in that odd way that things make sense in nonsensical situations...you know?!
So this was not good. Not really. But it had its moments. Don't read it. Just watch the show instead...and know that every illogical thing from the show is directly the book's fault!