Reviews - Um Veneno Doce e Sombrio

2.51k reviews for:

Um Veneno Doce e Sombrio

Judy I. Lin

3.6 AVERAGE

loki_5's review against another edition

4.0

emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

achjake's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous emotional tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: N/A

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

storycrab's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous emotional fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Unlike it's predecessor, A Venom Dark and Sweet is split between 2 POV characters. Unfortunately, one of them, Kang, is not an interesting perspective. He spends a large portion of the book in the dark about things and dealing with his emotions about Ning. If you enjoy angst, yearning, and wish-washy emotions, then you might have a better time with him than I did. I didn't enjoy him in the previous book and that didn't change with this one.

Our other POV character, Ning, is more interesting, but feels like a completely different character from the first book. My guess is that we only experienced Ning is a very specific time period where she had to put on a stoic, brave face and curtail her emotions. Unfortunately, that didn't come across in the previous novel for me so her anger, immaturity, and pouting felt like it came from out of nowhere. On the other hand, her path through the plot was much more interesting and pulled me along the story. It helped that she spent most of her time around side characters like Princess Zhen, Ruyi, and her sister that were compelling.

I've seen in other places that this book is marked as having LGBTQ+ characters, but that's not quite true. While

Princess Zhen and Ruyi are confirmed lesbian lovers as hinted at in the previous book

, this book spends little time on that and doesn't explicitly confirm it until the last 4th of the novel. It felt like the 2 women kissing in the background of a Star Wars movie and calling that a diversity win. It's unfortunate because they have way more chemistry than the main straight pair (who honestly had none).

I had really been hoping that I would enjoy this sequel more than the first one, but sadly it dropped many of the elements that I liked the most.

sleighr52's review against another edition

3.0

I feel like this could have been one book and not a duology.

emheatley's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

grace_2025's review against another edition

3.0

It was pretty good. Definitely more violent then the first book. Nice conclusion to the duology. The beginning was a little slow but it got better!

kiwij96's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

You know when you think that some books really didn't need to be a duology/series, and that the first book could have been a longer standalone? This was that.