abi
I wasn't expecting any massive scandals here but the writing is so surface level that I felt like I was reading the most basic summary of someone's life
- the five page letter from her ‘stepdaughter' felt completely fake
- why is she so bothered about a fake story running in the sun (fuck the sun, awful rag) about her being homeless that she discusses it in multiple chapters??
- there's such a lack of emotion and detail in this book
genuinely, I have no idea why this was even published
on the whole this is probably a 2-3 star read. it summarises the case and some of the police failings but seems to do so in about half the book, and the other half is just waffle about other crimes.
however, this gets docked stars because:
- the author implies that gay men cannot be attracted to trans men. if they are then they can't be gay (what??) and iterates multiple times that an assault victim was actually amab (she was a trans woman) so that fits the victimology, because if she was a trans man with a vagina then that wouldn't be gay (again, what?? the logic??)
- outright says that anyone working for the police cannot be pro-blm or pro-palestine (what??)
- catfished the killer and recruited his friend to do it by asking to use his pictures because ‘he looked like a twink' (this one was weird and just rubbed me the wrong way)
I knew I should've dnf'd this when there was on-page sexual assault in the second chapter that is barely addressed for the rest of the book
I spent almost 400 pages with these characters and I have no idea who they are outside of being hockey players and no idea why they love each other.
the complete lack of communication in every aspect of their relationship was absolutely infuriating. how are you going to marry someone when you're scared of being physically intimate with them in case they ghost you? they just never seemed to talk about their relationship and jumped from friends, to more, to married without ever defining what they were or what they wanted. kinks weren't negotiated, boundaries weren't discussed, I just had no idea what they saw in each other.
- the first sex scene was way too dubcon, if not complete sexual assault
- I couldn't get into the pairing, they didn't have chemistry, and they didn't really talk outside of having sex
- the pacing was all over the place
- this needed some more editing
- the multiple instances of assault (one mc punching the other) were completely unnecessary
This was a weird one because I feel like the title and cover are for an entirely different book than what this actually was. I was expecting a cosy Legends & Lattes-esque book but it just wasn't that at all.
Poor worldbuilding, poor editing/formatting, and just overall not very fleshed out.
Sometimes I think L&L was just a fluke for me and I don't like cosy fantasy outside of that book.
