Jojo
Ehh, unfortunately this didn't live up to the hype for me. This was like 90% smut without any real sense that the characters had romantic chemistry, and no plot. Despite having a long history together, once the MC's started hooking up early on (around the 20% mark) it honestly felt like they were just doing it out of boredom, and the romance never progressed from there. There were occasional moments of the fun banter I love in the Off-Campus series, and I think the story had a good premise for there to be a lot of angst - which is what I had hoped for.
However for me, the lack of romantic chemistry/development, along with a bunch of random casual sexism (from both MC's) and biphobia (from Wes) -both of which went unchallenged- really spoiled the reading experience for me here.
I definitely enjoyed this more than Corrupt, since I really dislike Michael and Rika as characters, and I was really interested in reading Kai's story. However, this ended up being more of a 3.5 star read for me - while I liked reading from Kai and Banks' perspectives a lot, and I did feel like the plot moved pretty quickly and was a fun read, there are a couple things holding me back from really loving the book.
While it makes sense considering Damon's relationship to Banks that a lot of her backstory involved him as well, a lot of the story, both past and present, just ended up feeling like it was setting up for the next book. Since I was excited to read Kai's story, I honestly felt like at times, that aspect took away from learning more about him and developing the romance. Considering that I didn't find that to be an issue at all in Corrupt (except for that scene in the sauna feeling quite random and obviously added to set up this book) I found it a bit frustrating that I barely felt like I knew Kai as a character by the end of this book. I also found that the romance wasn't super convincing a lot of the time (though there were a few scenes I really did like between them) and there was a lot of telling, but not showing, the connection between Kai and Banks.
I also found that the whole arranged marriage plot ended up feeling pretty rushed and unsatisfying IMO. There was so much build-up to that, and then we even got a hint that Kai might have been interested in Vanessa when she was introduced, and then the whole plot was just dropped almost immediately? There was also a weird offhand comment from Banks about Vanessa not being who Kai thinks she is, or something? It just felt like that plot thread was kinda left hanging, and I found it weird in terms of the pacing.
Despite all of that, I did breeze through the book, and still found it to be a really fun read! I've heard so many good things about Kill Switch, so I'm excited to continue the series.
From the description, I had really high hopes for this book, and unfortunately I was let down. The description and cover made the book out to be a fun rivals-to-lovers romance, however to me, the story and main characters just didn't do anything particularly interesting for me. While the writing was good, it felt like a very standard steamy historical romance with a class-difference couple, with the suffrage plot feeling more like an afterthought.
As Annabelle, the heroine, was described as a “daring Oxford rebel,” I was expecting a much more passionate and driven character. I never really felt much of a connection to her, despite spending more than half of the book in her POV. I ended up caring more about the side characters, and enjoying their time on page, rather than Annabelle and her love interest Sebastian, which is not what you want when reading a romance.
I also really disliked Sebastian as a love interest. I've read (and enjoyed) a lot of romances where the hero comes off very cold and rude at the beginning, but becomes a well-developed character with a believable romance by the end, so I get exactly what “type” of character he was written as - it's been done many, many times. I just couldn't bring myself to like, or even care about Sebastian at all despite spending a significant amount of the book in his perspective. The way he treated his brother throughout the story really soured my opinion on him as well, and I never really felt like his character grew from that. When they reconciled at the end, it honestly felt very random, and like something that had to get resolved for his whole redemption arc to wrap up by the last chapter. I also noticed he had a habit of looming over Annabelle, sometimes even physically restraining her during emotional moments, which gave me the ick. I think it's supposed to be hot and ~alpha~, but...no thanks. Also, felt like a bizarre choice for what was marketed as a historical romance with feminist overtones.
I honestly never bought the romance between the two characters, it felt more like they lusted after each other and had a few interesting conversations, and jumped right into being obsessed with each other. This could just be my personal preference, but I would have preferred seeing more conversations and banter between them before building up their attraction. I feel like having so much time spent lusting over each other, even very early on in the story, resulted in a lot of time that could have been spent on developing their relationship more.
DNF @ 43% - I can't stand a single person in this book besides her grandma, her friend Natalie and Daniel, the guy she starts seeing after she's begun work as an escort. I read ahead and spoiled myself regarding the reveal that the love interest is the friend's dad (of course, we have to add more to the ~forbidden element, because the 30 year age gap and the fact that he's married just aren't enough, of course! I've also read spoiler reviews that explain that she gets into a relationship with Daniel, while also pursuing James (the MMC and Natalie's dad) and continuing to take on clients, all without telling Daniel what she does for work!!
After reading those spoilers, I know this reading experience isn't going to improve for me, and I honestly don't care to see these characters get a happy ending. I actually do enjoy messy books, but this one is just too much, because it feels like the characters, especially Aubrey, are just being awful to multiple people for the hell of it - there is literally no reason for her to string Daniel along for a significant portion of the book, and even after their first date, she's thinking about how it's wrong for her to pursue him while not telling him what she does...yet she will apparently do just that for a lot of this book
I've also now heard about the author's other, extremely questionable (to put it very mildly) series, and that has also left a bad taste in my mouth. I regret buying a physical copy just because the cover is pretty.
DNF @ 50%
Potentially a soft DNF, as I've loved a few Mariana Zapata books, and I want to love this as well!
I'm just finding this is becoming somewhat of a chore to get through, and I'd rather pick up something more compelling, rather than skimming large chunks of this. MZ books tend to either really work for me, or be wayyy too slow-paced, heavy on the inner monologue, and needlessly wordy, and this is starting to feel like it may fall into the latter category.
I've run into a distracting amount of editing/grammatical errors, to the point where I've had to re-read several sentences multiple times over just to make sense of what she's actually trying to say. She also REFUSES to repeat character names throughout conversations, so rather than just saying “my mom said...” more than once in an exchange, she'll say something like “the woman who had virtually raised me and my four siblings all alone...”
Another issue I've been having is that I just haven't felt that connected to Jasmine, which hinders the experience in a single POV 500+ page romance.
Last - I'm really not a fan of Ivan using the nickname “meatball” towards Jasmine, especially coupled with all of the talk of her being on the larger side, body-wise, for a figure skater. From reading reviews, it sounds like there's no real explanation for why he refers to her that way, which makes me feel like it likely is in reference to her body? I also was grossed out by him coming off pretty dismissive of the fact that she was uncomfortable doing a nude photoshoot with him, and was worried that he would make nasty comments about her body. Since I didn't finish, this could potentially be addressed more, but I really didn't like the way he reacted during that scene, and that was the part that led me to put this one on hold.
DNF @ 36%...I enjoyed this book well enough in the beginning, but since about 1/4 in, I find that the story has been dragging a lot, and I'm just not feeling motivated to continue. I like the concept and reading a romance with characters that are (and feel) older than a lot of the romances I've read recently, but the romantic plotline and characters themselves are just feeling very meh