2022-10-07
Interesting… but… Not great
It was an… interesting modern fairytale. And the fact it had that darker edge was a nice touch, but there were some bits and pieces that ruined the story for me.
1. Arabella was too naïve; She was a Cipher in every meaning of the word (in a literary sense). She was so devoid of meaningful character traits I got frustrated and annoyed that someone who seemed to be portrayed as smart and capable could be so utterly dumb and overly trusting. She was also basically a Mary-Sue.
2. How old exactly was Gavin? Because it made it sound like he was an adult 14 years ago which makes the pursuit of Arabella in the Now Creepy AF (CONTEXT: She’s 25 in the present so 14 years ago she was 11). And if Gavin was even just early 20s he would be late 30s early 40s. Which yeah isn’t THAT creepy, but the fact he would have been around Arabella since she was a kid just makes me feel ICK!
3. I hate Maddux’s name. So MUCH!
It’s clunky and awkward to read every other sentence. Plus the combination of Hunter, Tempest & Maddux makes little sense to me and makes me think the writer just wanted classic early 2000s protagonist names with little care for the background she established.
4. The grammar and sentence structures need A LOT of work. Some passages were just plain painful to read.
5. The story/plot itself was too much like what people THINK ‘Beauty & the Beast’ is about.
B&B is about someone falling in love DESPITE outward appearances. Its a friendship that evolves into love AFTER he lets her go (the writer kind if did this but it was poorly executed). There really wasn’t enough of a timeline established in the book to build a friendship. Their entire thing is sexual chemistry built on a power imbalance.
6. This book portrayed BDSM-like sexual fantasies as taboo and ‘depraved’. Repeatedly the words used to describe his and her desires, proclivities, are intended to invoke a sense of secret shame. I think the author was trying for sexy but it just made it sound like she had no idea what she was writing about.
7. The timeline was all over the place. Basically it had all the action happening in a 2-3 day span which made the story feel rushed and very insta-love. There was no time To develop character and the whole this was pretty much an info-dump from minute 1.