sophiehatters's reviews
981 reviews

i related so badly to delilah’s imposter syndrome. hers are valid, because i mean if you think about it, she did nothing of material in her journey to breaking the pelumbra curse. unless, not until the very end. she just made things up as she went, and was just lucky enough things worked out eventually. 

in all honesty, it wasn’t quite a 4 star read for me. if i were to be extremely nitpicky, i’d give this one a 3.25 stars. beautiful writing, loved all the characters but there was just something missing—something that i can’t quite put my finger on. 

well. i’ll be honest, i picked up this book because of the negative reviews. i’m the kind of person who always takes negative reviews with a grain of salt. unfortunately, i think the people had a point. 

this book was such a mess! that’s the nicest way i could put it. scarlett was unbearable, the people of oak haven were unbearable, and for the life of me, i didn’t understand why nate williams cared so much for scarlett. she never gave him any reason to!

i honestly hated every second of this book. i didn’t mind that it was long, but i minded that it was filled with endless drivel. there was simply way too much exposition, especially in thorn’s povs. speaking of, whose book this is even? is it thorn’s? or rune’s? because i could have sworn that i got more thorn’s povs than rune’s. 

or maybe his povs were too long that it felt like they went on forever. i would also like to mention a few things that i was confused about: 

if they’re in france, why are the kids speaking in english? that seemed odd.

there was a scene in the book where rune, a succubus, kissed her friend, jax (someone who already has a special someone) to suck his energy. her kissing her friend’s man was already bad enough but the guy was high out of his minds. he couldn’t possibly consent to that kiss. so, rune essentially sexually assaulted him, which grossed me out. 

 the heavy use of the word g*psy in place of yemeni. we all know this is racist as hell.

i’m saying this in the nicest way possible but the romance in this book was the least interesting to me. in fact, it was secondary to a lot of things. siobhan’s bond with emily, and the mother/son relationship stood out more to me. 

there was just something heartwarming about seeing emily receiving the maternal affection she had never gotten from her birth mother—a narcissistic woman who had been verbally abusing her all her life. seeing her slowly heal from her trauma, and utilizing coping skills from her therapist were so refreshing. in the end, i felt more connected to emily and siobhan than i did kier and emily. 

i don’t know how to explain it, but i just did not feel the chemistry between them. yes, they were sexually attracted to each other, but other than that, i didn’t feel like there was anything more to their relationship. it was so lackluster to me that i skipped their sex scenes—i just didn’t care for them at all. 

also, maybe it was just me, but emily didn’t feel like an american at all? i don’t know the author’s nationality, but the way emily talked didn’t sound american to me. aside from her asking secondary characters about certain irish terms, she could pass off as irish too, lol. one time she even used the term kilometer? whether there was a legitimate reason for this, it was still kind of funny to me but i don’t know!

i’ll be honest, for the first half of the book, i was very confused with the direction of the story. all we got was emily complaining about her family, her career and the publishing world. not that i had an issue with any of it of course, because she was actually funny. 

however, up to the 27% mark, there still wasn’t anything going on with emily and mark. i’m okay with slow burn, but if they weren’t meeting up regularly then where would there be the burn? emily was also still going on dates with different men at that point, so i wasn’t sure if the romantic relationship would be properly developed. it was only until around 38% to 40% where we got to somewhere. 

for the most part, i thought their romance developed okay afterwards, but i still wish we had more time with them. the author’s decision to bring in mark’s pov for part two was also a good one, and that’s huge coming from me as someone who hates male povs. i think that made up for it a little. 

 i am lowkey mad that i waited for months for my turn to borrow this book, only to be presented with this mess. i actually agree with some of the reviews on here, this book simply could not decide what it wanted to be. there are a lot of things sprinkled in but they were just there and unpolished.

it didn’t help that i did not like any of the characters. the revelation at the 90% mark also made me mad because it was so unnecessary. yeah we get it, everyone’s trash! only margot and margot alone are worth harper’s respect! please. the book tried so hard to turn the story into ‘harper and margot against the world’ kinda thing but i wasn’t buying it.