Damsel

The blurb does not lie. This is truly a dark, twisted, unforgettable fairy tale, and I love it in all its nasty glory. There will definitely be people who find this sickening, because the nastiness is what makes this book beautiful. There is no romance here. If anything, this is more like the unraveling of a potential romance.

The story starts with our prince in the middle of a quest to slay a dragon and rescue a damsel, who later on wakes up in the arms of the prince with no memories. As he brings her back to his kingdom to become his queen, however, she quickly realizes that it's... not the happily ever after kind of life she's heading into. The kingdom has questionable views of women, the men are nasty with fragile masculinity, and the prince himself quickly turns into a sexual predator.

Through the entire book, Prince Emory constantly belittles and talks down to Ama. He judges her openly, jumps on every chance he gets to molest her, humiliates her in front of everyone in the castle, threatens to kill her pet lynx, and later on even hits her when she refuses to play by his rules. Plus, we later find out that Ama is the dragon, whom Emory turned into a human by raping her via a sword cut. You read that right. He raped the dragon by proudly inserting his pee-pee into a wound. He also demands her to thank him for this, because he "made her beautiful".

I picked up this book knowing exactly what I was going to get, and it feels weirdly satisfying to see Emory acting like a completely irredeemable asshole that I was expecting him to be, even more so whenever Ama questions his behavior despite the acceptance he drilled onto her. I read this to the end expecting Emory to get punched in the face for all the nasty things he's done, and in that aspect the book does not disappoint at all. In fact, the ending is SO satisfying.

Read this if you want to see trash men getting what they deserve.