Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

I think Dark Desires After Dusk is my least favorite in the series so far. This is the first book with a hero who is a demon and even though we’ve met Cade and his brother in previous books, it still felt like there was a lot of new worldbuilding to take in and process (people, alliances, abilities, history, rituals, etc.). When I found myself pausing my reading to make a note it was almost always because I came across something informational, not because I liked the witty dialogue, prose, sexy times, etc. I generally like the rake & wallflower dynamic in historical romance, but it didn’t work for me as well here. I got a little annoyed with their bickering. Anyway, I know this review is all negative, but I am still hooked on this series. I think maybe it’s time for me to take a break, though, before it starts to feel too repetitive.

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Endnotes

Series: Immortals After Dark #5

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Setting: present day, starts out in New Orleans, LA, but they go on a road trip to Mississippi, Michigan, then the Arctic

Hero: Cadeon Woede, rage demon, straight and thick tawny hair past his jaw, blonde stubble, tan skin, South African accent (?), ne'er do well, rake, black sheep

Heroine: Holly Ashwin, halfling (valkyrie/human), strawberry blonde curly hair, OCD, mathematician and professor, working on her PhD

Tropes: rake/wallflower, road trip, fated mates, heroine in peril, forced proximity

Length: 433 pages, 117k words

Read Date: January 5, 2022

Heat Index: 3.5 🌡️🌡️🌡️

Content Warnings

eregriel's review

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adventurous emotional funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

lauramegan's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

cupidities's review

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adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

This is, by far, my least favorite book in the series so far.

It's got a lot going on that I really dislike in romance, so that's probably not a surprise:

cheating plot: Holly is in a long-term relationship with Tim when she starts hooking up with Cadeon.
Cadeon and Tim are very misogynist: Cadeon dismisses the seriousness of it by saying that he's less misogynist than humans are and that he still knows women of the Lore could easily kill him. Holly stops pushing back on Cadeon's sexism when she finds out the extent of Tim's sexism and just drops the issue completely.
insensitive towards mental illness: Holly has OCD as a mortal, and then is told that it's not actually OCD, she's just been medicating and using particular mechanisms to avoid over-stimulating her Valkyrie size. The way OCD is portrayed and discussed in this just feels really outdated and harmful.

I also didn't find the characters that deeply developed. Holly in particular remained pretty flat and one-dimensional.

Content Warnings

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