Jesus Christ.

I did a full video review you can also check out.

This is one of the worst things I've ever read. I am almost impressed by how truly terrible this entire experience was.

1. The world and plot of this story are absolute nonsensical. You can tell that the authors just threw in a bunch of borrowed tropes and plot setup in an "everything and the kitchen sink" style set up because ultimately it didn't matter. Nothing matters but getting our two just barely legal main character into a position where they could receive maximum abuse.

This is a fae world where the fae all wield elemental magic but they also have another order that makes them either vampires or werewolves or other shapeshifter? And then they also have their zodiac sign which is supposedly important enough to theme the whole series after but also mostly shows up as daily horoscopes at fae college? Pick a lane, besties. You are swerving all over your own damn story.

Nothing gets explained in a satisfactory manner and this uses the purposeful withholding of information to keep our main characters and thus the readers in the dark. We just bumble in the dark of this world along with our totally unobservant and criminally un-curious main characters. No matter what the world or characters threw at these two, they never asked the right questions or even any questions at all. It was frustrating.

And listen, if this book just wants to be a "bully romance" (HA!!!) then stop throwing world and plot elements at me and just be the shallow bully romance you want to be.

There is certainly a set-up here, but after we get the main characters in place to receive maximum abuse, the plot disappears and it just becomes a series of violating their consent. Seriously, it's just a string of scenes watching them get bullied and then in no way react appropriately to their bullies and in fact decide to flirt with and kiss them instead. Then the story ends in a way that just screams "OKAY BYE, BUY THE NEXT BOOK" with nothing that could be argued to be a resolution for the freaking book I was already reading.

This is set at a fae college, but THEY HAD DETENTION LOL. Nothing about this read like college of any sort. This is a high school story with a bunch of kids acting like high schoolers but the authors aged it up so they can include sex. It's WEIRD and we should all be asking QUESTIONS.

2. The writing is terrible and so is the editing, but I have my doubts that any amount of editing could've said this mess. The descriptions are often nonsensical or contradictory. The two alternating points of view sound EXACTLY ALIKE and the two main characters are indistinguishable. Truly, the authors had to COLOR CODE THEM and give one of the twins BLUE HAIR and that's the only way to know who is who at any given moment. You could switch the names on all the chapters and nothing material would change about the story. The four bully love interests are equally as shallow. They each get one (1) distinguishing characteristic (really mean! a vampire! touchy feeling! black!) and that's it. Again, you could just swap them around and nothing would change.

The authors are also British but for some reason made the main characters American even though the book is primarily set in a fantasy realm. Then they fill their book with British spellings and Britishism. If anyone can explain WHY, that would be great.

3. I've already mentioned that Tory and Darcy are basically the same character and that they don't ask any of the right questions. I understood none of their actions or motivations. They literally would get dangled out of windows or set on fire (I AM NOT JOKING) and in the next scene the bully would be like "want to ride on my back?" and they'd be like "yeah, okay." And I'm just supposed to... go with it? IN WHAT WORLD.

All of the supporting characters are whatever. With (maybe) one exception, all of the female characters are either bitches or annoying, really highlighting how "not like other girls" our main characters are. There is a Latino character who spends the entire time just randomly saying Spanish words in the most infuriating and (yep, again) nonsensical ways. White people, stop writing Latine characters if all you are going to have them do is randomly say "chicas" and or crap like "this school is muy cliquey." When the one Black character shows up, one of the girls basically says that she has the urge to touch his hair. WHAT THE HELL.

The adult characters made no sense to me, but I was particularly infuriated with Orion, the teacher who is clearly being set up as a love interest, so that's cool. His personality was basically "does what the plot demands" because sometimes he was using compulsion and feeding non-consensually on the girls and then other times we would gallop to their rescue. Oh, I'm sure he's got a secret that will "explain" his behavior, but I've got an even better reason: because the plot demanded.

3. This was physically painful to read. This is NOT a bully romance. Maybe the entire series can be categorized that way, but this first book has ABSOLUTELY NO ROMANCE. It is JUST bullying. It's is hundreds of pages of watching our two main characters get bullied by almost everyone around them and still somehow find their bullies attractive. They start to fall for their abusers for absolutely no reason than we can see, except that instead of an arc, change, growth or plot progression, the authors of this book seem to think "bully romance" in fact just means women kiss their abusers no matter what.

I get that the bully boys were mad because the girls being back threatened their family power. I have a feeling we also have a good set up for lots of "my dad is mean so that's why I'm a bully please forgive me" in the future. That said, the actually bullying MAKES NO SENSE. It becomes so extreme and no one stops them? And yet it falls short of murdering the girls but WHY? If they face no consequences, it strikes me that they could just push them off cliffs on page one and be done with it, but they don't?? BUT WHY? Who is the bully police? Who is making up the rules??

Garbage.

This whole thing was garbage.

And if anyone says it gets better in 7 books or whatever, I night throw myself off a cliff.