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wolfiegrrrl's review
informative
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
Right off the bat, we have an omniscient narrator who can't focus for longer than a few paragraphs at most when the characters are apart, but when multiple characters are together in the same scene it's like a constant baton pass of whose turn is it to narrate their thoughts on the story. I can see this style working better in a movie where the camera pans over the main characters at a party/gathering and each gets a quick voice over line of inner dialogue to establish their character and how they think of the other major players. But that only works once before losing its effect unless played well. Constantly slipping in and out of characters' thoughts (sometimes before they've even been introduced in the scene) just left me confused as to who was thinking what thought about which character. On top of that, the terrible grammar made the book hard to read and comprehend. I can't tell if the writing got better by the end of the book or if I just got used to it well enough to stop noticing as many flaws.
But most (if not all) of the people reading this book are in it for the promised romance and not the writing, so here are my questions and observations.
First and foremost: Why do both of the primary male love interests (Cutter and Tyler) specifically refer to sex and sexual attraction as a threat to the women they're entangled with, as though it's supposed to be a turn-on when it's literally workplace sexual harassment and assault? Even the women call it a threat and assault. Sophia is just as bad when it comes to being aggressively against consent, don't get me wrong, but this struck me as a concerning pattern from the start.
It was also appalling how Cutter spoke to his daughter, Maddy. Truthfully, it was disturbing how most of the characters viewed her in their minds - shaming her and her brother for their unconventional clothing/ accessory choices when they are literally children trying to express themselves in harmless ways - but the way the adults referred to Maddy as a "freak" for dressing goth and the way her own father stated that her body "belongs to him" when she tried to argue her agency was horrendous. All of that felt like it was leading up to something and I waited to see if it would be properly condemned, but in the end the goth girl got a pastel makeover and suddenly she wasn't a "freak" anymore because she got highlights instead of streaks in her hair.
The Sophia/Tyler romance is trying so hard to be the "city girl and country boy" story, but it falls flat because they're both from the same rich family and that's hard to get past. Unfortunately, their storyline falls into the "it's sexy because it's incestuous but not really incest" trope, though at least the book acknowledges that partway through... And then it got so much worse when Tyler casually revealed he had the hots for Sophia since he was 20 and she was 16, especially when he admitted in the previous scene to having questionable sex fantasies about her for years and tossed on a heaping dose of victim blaming / slut shaming by stating that it frustrated him that she "knew she was attractive" and he couldn't touch her. When she was 16. And he was 20.
The Pilar/Cutter relationship is aiming for "innocent housewife swept off her feet by the virile manly man" trope, but it's just assault and that's about all I've got to say about that.
Most of the problems I have with this book can be attributed to the fact that there is so much cishet-normative nonsense in this book. The only queerness to exist is stereotyped fluff, which made the fact that it was even included at all in this book so much more baffling. And the blatant sexism is everywhere. The men all claim to "own" the women in their lives and constantly force their desires onto them, meanwhile the women view the men as lowly heathens because "our intellectual female brains are so much more mature than their barbaric boy brains and they would be hopeless without us telling them what to do in ways so subtle that their man pride won't be hurt", so in the end no one wins in this universe. But it's a fascinating case study for world-building, which leads me to an intriguing revelation I had...
Somewhere along the way I started to believe that this was secretly an ABO / omegaverse story due to how many times the characters' sexual attraction to each other was described in animalistic terms.
I really did not need to know how many times a love interest "smelled male/female", whatever that means. Lines like that cropped up so often that it seemed like "he was a boy, she was a girl" was the only reason they were attracted to each other at all - and let's be honest, it is. For those uninitiated into the realm of omegaverse fiction, that's called "scenting" and it drives all the girls and boys buck wild.
Sex includes minds emptying of control until only "feral" instincts are left, clawing and scratching like wild beasts, and this line: "We'll work on finesse when I'm not ready to howl at the moon."
Considering ABO/omegaverse fiction is based on now-defunct research on wolf pack dynamics, that wolf line was certainly quite a choice for that smut scene, let me just say. All in all, this is baby's first foray into ABO without getting into the more hardcore aspects of the genre. It's definitely someone's kink, so I'm not here to knock it, but combined with the overt non-con and assault/harassment I just wish the author had been more honest about the story she was writing.
I wouldn't recommend reading this book if you're expecting romantic fluff within a murder mystery setting. There is so little of either. This is another writer who pulls a nonsensical "twist ending" our of her butt for shock value because the rest of her story was dull and predictable. It's a book about business smut, plain and simple. 90% of the time, it just felt like she was flaunting her research on wine-making techniques, so at least this book is decent if you want to pick up some trivia you didn't know before reading.
I'd rate this only 1 star because it wasn't my cup of tea and the technical aspects of the writing were hard to get past. The only reason I wouldn't rate it lower is that I recognize how this story might appeal to a certain audience. Personally, I prefer my ABO fiction when it commits and I get some world-building development out of it. This did not deliver on either. Go hard or go home, Nora Roberts.
But most (if not all) of the people reading this book are in it for the promised romance and not the writing, so here are my questions and observations.
First and foremost: Why do both of the primary male love interests (Cutter and Tyler) specifically refer to sex and sexual attraction as a threat to the women they're entangled with, as though it's supposed to be a turn-on when it's literally workplace sexual harassment and assault? Even the women call it a threat and assault. Sophia is just as bad when it comes to being aggressively against consent, don't get me wrong, but this struck me as a concerning pattern from the start.
It was also appalling how Cutter spoke to his daughter, Maddy. Truthfully, it was disturbing how most of the characters viewed her in their minds - shaming her and her brother for their unconventional clothing/ accessory choices when they are literally children trying to express themselves in harmless ways - but the way the adults referred to Maddy as a "freak" for dressing goth and the way her own father stated that her body "belongs to him" when she tried to argue her agency was horrendous. All of that felt like it was leading up to something and I waited to see if it would be properly condemned, but in the end the goth girl got a pastel makeover and suddenly she wasn't a "freak" anymore because she got highlights instead of streaks in her hair.
The Sophia/Tyler romance is trying so hard to be the "city girl and country boy" story, but it falls flat because they're both from the same rich family and that's hard to get past. Unfortunately, their storyline falls into the "it's sexy because it's incestuous but not really incest" trope, though at least the book acknowledges that partway through... And then it got so much worse when Tyler casually revealed he had the hots for Sophia since he was 20 and she was 16, especially when he admitted in the previous scene to having questionable sex fantasies about her for years and tossed on a heaping dose of victim blaming / slut shaming by stating that it frustrated him that she "knew she was attractive" and he couldn't touch her. When she was 16. And he was 20.
The Pilar/Cutter relationship is aiming for "innocent housewife swept off her feet by the virile manly man" trope, but it's just assault and that's about all I've got to say about that.
Most of the problems I have with this book can be attributed to the fact that there is so much cishet-normative nonsense in this book. The only queerness to exist is stereotyped fluff, which made the fact that it was even included at all in this book so much more baffling. And the blatant sexism is everywhere. The men all claim to "own" the women in their lives and constantly force their desires onto them, meanwhile the women view the men as lowly heathens because "our intellectual female brains are so much more mature than their barbaric boy brains and they would be hopeless without us telling them what to do in ways so subtle that their man pride won't be hurt", so in the end no one wins in this universe. But it's a fascinating case study for world-building, which leads me to an intriguing revelation I had...
Somewhere along the way I started to believe that this was secretly an ABO / omegaverse story due to how many times the characters' sexual attraction to each other was described in animalistic terms.
I really did not need to know how many times a love interest "smelled male/female", whatever that means. Lines like that cropped up so often that it seemed like "he was a boy, she was a girl" was the only reason they were attracted to each other at all - and let's be honest, it is. For those uninitiated into the realm of omegaverse fiction, that's called "scenting" and it drives all the girls and boys buck wild.
Sex includes minds emptying of control until only "feral" instincts are left, clawing and scratching like wild beasts, and this line: "We'll work on finesse when I'm not ready to howl at the moon."
Considering ABO/omegaverse fiction is based on now-defunct research on wolf pack dynamics, that wolf line was certainly quite a choice for that smut scene, let me just say. All in all, this is baby's first foray into ABO without getting into the more hardcore aspects of the genre. It's definitely someone's kink, so I'm not here to knock it, but combined with the overt non-con and assault/harassment I just wish the author had been more honest about the story she was writing.
I wouldn't recommend reading this book if you're expecting romantic fluff within a murder mystery setting. There is so little of either. This is another writer who pulls a nonsensical "twist ending" our of her butt for shock value because the rest of her story was dull and predictable. It's a book about business smut, plain and simple. 90% of the time, it just felt like she was flaunting her research on wine-making techniques, so at least this book is decent if you want to pick up some trivia you didn't know before reading.
I'd rate this only 1 star because it wasn't my cup of tea and the technical aspects of the writing were hard to get past. The only reason I wouldn't rate it lower is that I recognize how this story might appeal to a certain audience. Personally, I prefer my ABO fiction when it commits and I get some world-building development out of it. This did not deliver on either. Go hard or go home, Nora Roberts.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexism
Minor: Death and Gun violence
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