Wuthering Frights

I...This book...well...grr....scrunchies nose and then sighs I'm still trying to forget the last 15 pages or so. I was thinking this review would bring 3 stars up until those last pages. But yeah. No. Those pages made me subtract a star. I'm still not sure what the author's goal was with that scene. There seemed to be no purpose. Maybe she thought it would be hot and passionate? It wasn't. Ick and gross would be better descriptors.

So most of this installment - #4 in the Dulcie O'Neil series - is just there. It doesn't break any new ground either character or plot wise. Honestly, it's pretty much one big trope. It's surprising the characters aren't tripping over all the trope-iness, the way it's just laying all around covering up the minuscule other plot that felt very filler-ish at times. You know the trope where 1 half of the main couple does something to save the other half, something that is terrible, awful and/or borderline illegal - usually blackmailed into it - and then can't tell the saved person what they did. Because there are death threats. Basically a Lifetime movie of the week plot. Not Hallmark this time. Because Hallmark movies and their immensely watchable cheesiness do not allow for dark and dreary death threats.

So our previously somewhat kick-arse heroine Dulcie pretty much folds like a metal chair in a church basement and does her evil father's bidding. Meanwhile, Knight, the saved one is completely clueless, emotionally blind and apparently the most gullible Loki to ever live (which is odd because Loki in Norse mythology is a trickster). All that “fun” results in lies and fights and big breakups and brooding and sobbing guilt and woe is me, my life sucks inner monologues. For. The. Whole. Book. Which thankfully isn't that long. Sure there are a few moments levity and sweetness - Trey's love of Dulcie's dog Blue and Sam being the very smart bff who knows Dulcie better than she knows herself. Plus there's Christina who is kinda fabulous in her own way (all that awesomeness clued me in pretty quickly that she was hiding something important). But bright and shiny moments were few and far between. We're left with more angst than usual, an even more convoluted love quadrangle (why again does every guy in Splendor want Dulcie?) and a rebel allian....erm I mean Resistance that has existed for years without anyone knowing about it. Makes me not want to grab my eReader and swipe over to book 5 any time soon.

So I think I'll be taking a step back from As the Netherworld Turns for now. Not forever - I'm sure I'll be back in Splendor at some point. Because my curiosity will get the better of me and I'll have to find out how the author either ignores or explains away those last few pages.