Hali

Hated the first half of the book. The worldbuilding, imo, was all over the place and the translation is lacking. Its also just very unconvincing.. this world just doesnt feel real at all. Its not scary to me because of it. Its like an exaggerated parody that I couldnt take seriously.

The second half tho? Truly gruesome. Actual horror. I feel sick to my stomach. Im never reading this again, good horror

Short review: This book could've been better if it wasnt young adult.

Long story: I really wanted to like this book the longer I read it. The more I read the book itself and about the author I realized that this is also a deeply personal story about grief, falsely packaged as a young adult romance novel. YA implies its marketed towards teens too, but the author retains a writing style that is very reminiscent of dark romance and erotica (which she is an author of too). Not saying teens cant read this, but this book models multiple tragedies, some on accident: A codependent relationship, characters that dont exist outside of their romance, heavy miscommunication and the death of a character. The characters never act their age either. While the plot of this book explains that later on, I found myself very irritated and pulled out of my immersion by how inaccurately child characters were written. And while Im talking about immersion - the writing style is very flat, simple and wattpad. The author actually says that tongues duel at some point. Wattpad writing in combination with supposedly deep talks about life and death (that repeat themselves over and over again) just clash, and exactly that is why this book shouldntve been YA in my opinion. This couldve been a great emotional venture into grief and dealing with it. Instead its one book of a girl dying and leaving behind a boyfriend amongst many. 

1. If you're gonna add trigger warnings, try to tag not just the kinks but also the literal abuse in the book

2. I know Im an idiot for being invested in the plot of erotica, but why even try to make a big cool plot and then leave 20 plotholes or straight up ignore it at the end?

3. Shoutout to the virtue signaling of mentioning trans and genderqueer people once in the entire book for a corny diversity comment near the end and apart from that having not a single character that isnt a cis man/woman (for clarification, I hated it because its corny, not morally bad or anything. just include actually diverse characters instead of doing this)

4. Grammar mistakes. :-[ To be expected in smaller books but when I already dislike the book they pop out even more I guess

5. Not the worst, but bumps this book down to one star for me: I didnt enjoy the smut at all

short story: its literally mid

long: it started off strong and just kept getting weaker, especially near the end. things just kept happening over and over again and the characters are kinda insufferable and also they never actually know whats going on even though its pretty obvious

reading some of the reviews makes me wonder if we read the same book. I shake my head at people saying “some scenes made no sense! Like, why the incest?!” Well, see, because they're insane, and they're all mentally unravelling, and to show how deep the fucked-up-ness runs in this friend group and also how fucked up they are after traumabonding like insane. Like, did you miss Camilla going on dates over the course of the book? Charles beating somebody up for her? Charles beating HER?