Reviews with content warning for Rape - Tryst Six Venom

There were some interesting ideas brought up (briefly).
I expected violence, I've read all the trigger warnings ahead of time, and I can stomach a lot of stupid melodrama, enemies to lovers is in my top five tropes. From the summary, the book sounds fine. But I hated it from start to finish.
Plot-wise the biggest criticism is the gratuitous amount of trauma and suffering. It's so excessive it becomes funny because every sad thing imaginable has happened to these poor characters.

By the end of these 500+ pages nobody changes, not really. All of the eating disorder stuff is unresolved. Clay's internalized homophobia just disappears. Clay and Olive seem like a horrible couple. Mind you I didn't expect them to be in a healthy relationship but their good moments are okay. Their bad moments are jail worthy, I found myself angry at the author and her team.

A deeply 2014 Tumbler reading experience.

Writing wise a lot of plot points get dropped and forgotten, probably like 70%. The tone is wack, going from depressing to flirty way too quickly. The pacing is lousy. Some scenes will drag on without an apparent need for them to last as long. On the other hand, a lot of moments felt cut off because we would switch POVs and it is another day.

Content Warnings

jadehusdanhicks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

By far one of my new fave enemies to lovers books, tryst six venom is massively underated in the sapphic genre.

I loved how it talked about different types of families, from broken families to tight knit from traditional to non traditional.

The way the bad character in this was amazing because I truly hate Callum with every ounce of my being and I would protect clay and liv till the very end.

If you want sapphic, enemies to lovers, kinda rich vs the underdog vibes with underlying messages of growing to accept yourself and following your hearts true desires then I can say without a doubt this book needs to be on your TBR like last week.
Just check the TW as this is defo 18+ in my eyes

Content Warnings

anemonima's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

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

1.5

Content Warnings

grasshopperjungle's review against another edition

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This is the worst book I have ever read in my life. I wrote out this entire review while reading the book, and although I would like to make it more sensical, I honestly do not think this book even deserves that. So here is the review in all of its glory:

INCEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DIE BOOK DIE. a teammate has sex with TWO OF OLIVIA'S BROTHERS AT ONCE. that is incest
outdated concepts of virginity
constant brand name and song name dropping, this will age like milk
CRINGE
unrealistic dialogue
this is just weird and perverted how much they have sex when they are SCHOOL CHILDREN. Penelope Douglas is a freak
what is the obsession with getting caught???
they get fucking turned on by jealousy and possessiveness. it's genuinely a very strong ongoing theme and its prevalence is so poignant that i just think it's irresponsible of Douglas to write it in as if it's a healthy part of an emerging relationship. ESPECIALLY with characters and a target audience at the young adult range. SPECIFICALLY, with the influence that Douglas has, and how little LGBTQ+ representation there is in fiction, this book can and will do some serious damage to the way a young reader perceives healthy relationships
there is NO explanation as to why these two even like each other, and when there is, it's so fucking far into the book and such a stark contrast to how they thought of each other at the start of the book when they supposedly were crushing on each other
RAPE!!!!!!!!!! Penelope Douglas can't include consent in ANY of the sex scenes they write to save their life!!!!!!!!!!!
too many brothers!!!! too many teammates!!!!!!! not one of these side characters are well developed!!!!!!
at the start, Liv says that she’s 1/8 Cuban and 7/8 white, and yet there is so much in this fucking book insinuating that the 'saints' are racist because they don’t like Liv’s family, and so many arguments over ownership of land??? 1/8 just doesn't sound right. i guess Penelope Douglas, as a white person, knows not to speak about race issues when they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. with that being said, every single motherfucking person in this book is white. nice try idiot
WHY INCLUDE SLURS???????? WHY???? i will just never understand why books like these feel the need to include slurs as the prominent/most obvious form of homophobia, but none of the actually painful micro-aggressions that are felt the worst by minority groups?? especially considering that the homophobia in this just like isn't reflective of how vile people actually can be in real life
so much physical violence in this, it's fucking absurd. why does there need to be multiple physical brawls? why are people beating each other up?
so so much trauma bonding and just straight-up abuse written into both character’s family's, but neither of it is done in a nuanced way which explores the deep influences these abusive relationships have on the teenage girls, but rather just to give each character depth and have 'secrets'. WE ARE MORE THAN OUR TRAUMA. YOU ARE INTERESTING REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT YOU HAVE BEEN ABUSED, OR HAVE EXPERIENCED A DEATH OF A LOVED ONE, OR ARE AN ORPHAN. people are so much more multifaceted than their deepest darkest traumas, and Penelope Douglas needs to acknowledge that there are healthier ways of dealing with grief that fucking someone you hate. seriously.
just serious continuation errors. nothing is really ever explained, especially the movement of time, and the reason why characters are where they are, it just really doesn't flow at all
i was bored well before page 100. they have sex so early in this book, and it is just so significantly longer than it should be. makes me want to rip my eyes out. Every other romance book holds the traditional arc of ‘blah blah blah they can’t be together for whatever reason, and then they get together and it's perfect, but there’s 50-100 pages left, so fun little conflict, and THEN happily ever after’. This book says fuck that, makes them have sex in the first few chapters, and then they have this weird secret thing going on like the entire book and you never end up rooting for them.
this is just a personal preference, but i really hate the trope of ' slutty main character one wants to rock the world of virginal main character 2.' say it with me: bbooorrinnggg. also outdated concepts of virginity suck. maybe it's because i'm older and more experienced, i just think that this trope is too easy to write, and thus too easy for shitty authors to take full advantage of and write awful stories that just do not need to be published. also too often this dynamic includes rampant biphobia and misogyny.
okay maybe this is a bit of ignorance on my behalf BUT, there is genuinely little to no homophobia from the main characters' immediate family in this, and only mildly so from their friends. The most homophobic language and insinuations come from one of the two main characters/love interests, which, if there isn’t that harmful language anywhere else in the book, why does it need to come from the mouth of one of the queer women???? In a relationship with another gay woman????? Seriously. And then there’s this whole, ‘oh no we can’t out our relationship to people' and as a reader, I cannot pick up on a single reason why. No one has said anything harmful to them, aside from some (like 2-3) of their shittiest friends, and not to mention they graduate high school within like 60 days, so why is this a major point of conflict??
Hello!! Let me introduce myself, my username is GrasshopperJungle, I love to read, and I’m from Australia :P. Now, if the author of this FUCKING GOD FORSAKEN BOOK would like to EXPLAIN TO ME, or anyone else living outside of the states, how their college admission system works, that would be fabulous! Thanks so much! Love you! In all seriousness though, it behoves me as to how Douglas can expect readers from other countries to follow along with the whole ‘they already got into college but they’re still in school and still have assignments that they work hard on’. I literally don’t get it, and it’s the most American thing to write a book and just not explain this crucial aspect.
How do the dads in this book have so much money? What do they all do for a living? Why are all the mums stay at home mothers? How do they go to a religious Christian school that is coeducational?
The word ‘thru’ in a sentence of dialogue between characters.
For a grown-ass adult, Penelope Douglas has an issue with every other grown-ass adult. Douglas writes every adult in every one of their books as pathetic, weak, and abusive, and all the teenagers in these books as being so much smarter and having such a better grip and understanding of life than their parents do. This would be understandable if the books were written by a teenager, by alas, Douglas is an adult with a Masters's degree, who is married with a child.
THE PARENTS "KIND OF KNEW" SHE WAS GAY CAUSE HAD POSTERS OF POP STARS IN HER ROOM UP AS A KID?????? AM I READING THIS RIGHT???????
The whole book, Liv is referred to, as Liv, but in her chapter titles, the name used is Olivia, which is stupidly confusing because she’s not referred to as Olivia at ANY point in the book.
An actual quote from the book “Why does it feel so good for her to know that I could hook up with anyone today like she doesn’t matter?”. The answer for you Liv is: it shouldn’t, you’re just abusive
There’s a back and forth of ‘I want to be with you, but I hate you, and we can’t be seen together in public ahh’ the entire book, and at one point Liv decides to take this seriously and be genuinely upset by it as if it hasn’t been the reality of their relationship the ENTIRE BOOK, why is she mad now? How is this a point of conflict now? I’m reading it, nothing has changed.
Liv just doesn’t understand how depression works, and Penelope Douglas doesn’t know how to write mental illness and explain it to the reader better than ‘the darkness’ or ‘her issues’ or ‘the despair’ or ‘whatever was going on in her head’. STIGIMITISINGGG MUCH
How does Liv go to a mega-rich school and live ‘on the other side of the tracks’ in a poorer area that is going to be bought out for the rich folk, and is still able to walk home from school? Are we thinking of the same America that I am, it’s not possible to get anywhere without a car, how is she walking that far?
Name double-ups. MC called Liv, another character called Lizbeth. MC's brother called Army, a friend called Amy. It’s just not that fucking hard to think of other names
They can’t spend any time in public together, every time they’re in public all they talk or think about is how desperately they wish they were having sex instead. I get it, I too was a hormonal teenager, but you can’t write in that they’re in love when that is the only common ground they share, that they both want to have sex with each other. Other than their high school, high school sport, and sexuality, they seriously have nothing in common and haven’t had any establishing conversations to prove a viable connection between them that isn’t trauma bonding.
Seriously. Just call the cops. That is aggravated sexual assault in company, and not in the fucking slightest something that is better to keep as blackmail.
These brothers are just straight up sluts, and it’s used as a plot device SO MANY times in the book its absurd. And they are sluts for teenagers in high school when they are all adults. Perverts