redsunyubin's reviews
188 reviews

I honestly have never written a review this long, but I have a lot of things to say about this one…
Up front: I have read the book after having watched all four seasons which definitely made this book better than it is…

The first and most obvious red flag with this book is a male author writing queer women, but that isn’t even the worst part of it.

Overall I think a lot of characters were lacking in depth or some form of being relatable. Villanelle is portrayed as this young woman who is only killing to feel something and is always having sex at any opportunity she can get. Some of the sex scenes were really unnecessary and as a lesbian myself made me very uncomfortable.

especially that one scene where she was rejected by Anna (touching her boobs without asking and Anna clearly not wanting it) and then just ran out and masturbated standing in some doorframe at the entrance of the theater?? Like wtf

In the show I very much enjoyed that Eve was older than Villanelle and basically had her life together with a loving relationship until V started to trigger Eve’s obsession with female assassins even more and ultimately lead to this this tension and cat and mouse game between the two. In this book Eve was just a young woman who is “not like other girls” and the fact that she has all of this knowledge about unsolved cases and female assassins is mentioned just once. She really seemed quite boring.

The fact that I was more attached to some characters because of the show is very prominent with Konstantin

when he was killed off I only cared because I liked him in the show, but basically had no reason to mind based on what was written about him in the book.

There were a couple of funny lines that made me chuckle, but it wasn't as witty and dark as I expected. Phoebe Waller-Bridge definitely worked some magic: I can see where she got some ideas from out of the book and the parts she kept deserved it, the rest can stay in written form. This honestly just shows that even the book had a lot more potential and a lot of ideas were lingering but not explored.

The tension between Eve and V was basically nonexistent, with V being more interested in mostly just messing with Eve but even then

the most exciting show-like scene was when V snuck into Eve’s hotel room in the middle of the night and stole a bracelet that was then never even mentioned again. Like why didn’t he use that opportunity to have Eve go “omg she was so close to me and has this sort of power over me”?

Also the whole “she's sending me a message personally by doing this was so random in the book like truly based on what did Eve come to that conclusion?

The end fell completely flat for me, that one scene with the password was unnecessary and that last line just made me cringe. If I didn’t watch the show I honestly would not pick up the second book. I didn't have the kind of heart pounding, exciting, wanting to know more feeling that I expected since there was never any of that throughout the book. Something like them almost running into each other, Eve being close to catching her, you name any scene like that in the show.

Eve doesn’t even get close to learning the real identity of V and instead just kind of skips past her often times and it’s all about the twelve and who ordered the hit on Kedrin

What saved this book a little and made me give it three stars was the fact that it was short, I didn't hate the writing style and saw some of it more as an extension of mostly the kills to the series.