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wardenred's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I am not the golden goose. I am more like an actual goose, hissing and honking and attacking small children who just want to give me bread.
Damn. This was so promising! That in media res opening really hooked me, and also, I listened to this one as an audiobook and the narrator did such a good job with the angry, self-deprecating POV character’s voice. A book with a trans MC, found family, angrily dealing with trauma, standing up to oppression, and deconstructing the fated mates trope sounded amazing. But alas, the further I got into it, the more I felt like the execution of the novel didn’t live up to its amazing potential.
Honestly, this felt very much like an early draft in need of editing. There are numerous sections that read like they were written only as means of figuring out what comes next. Plenty of characters have the exact same shrugging, lip-biting, fangs-gnashing mannerisms. The MC regularly pauses in the middle of dialogue and action to contemplate a bunch of stuff and go off tangent, to the point that I genuinely kept forgetting where the current scene was taking place or what was even happening in it by the time he stopped with the musings. The worldbuilding is full of holes, and the way the fae society functions is more just… a vague collection of ideas that need a lot of thinking through. There was really no need to explicitly spell out that the witches’ position in the fae society is a metaphor for trans/queer kids in the real world. The magic system is all over the place and doesn’t stick to its own rules. All in all, the book feels like someone excitedly telling themself or their closest friends a story, occasionally pausing to insert their own strong opinions in the style of a viral Tumblr post. Which is a perfectly valid state for a book to be in! But, uh, maybe some of this should be fixed before publication.
There *are* things here that I found consistently interesting and promising, but I kept thinking of ways to fix the execution more than I was thinking about the story. Like, we have this premise: Wyatt escaped to the human world years before the book starts, now he’s getting dragged back by his fae prince fated mate. Once there, he gets a proposal from the villain whose beliefs clearly go against Wyatt’s own: make everyone hate you so that the wedding never happens, which would weaken the prince’s position and strengthen the villain. Wyatt wants to go back to the human world and also wants to cause chaos, so he agrees, and some shenanigans do follow—except they feel more like a series of loosely connected vignettes than a plot. Yeah, he does some chaotic stuff. The results of it get promptly fixed with magic, and no one’s opinion on Wyatt or the impending wedding changes much. He doesn’t have any real plans to meet his goal, he just wonders around the plot and makes intentional bad decisions.
Then we’ve got Briar, his best friend from the human world whose parents kind of adopted Wyatt in the backstory. When Emyr appears to drag Wyatt back to Asalin, she allegedly follows because she wants to help Wyatt with his goal of NOT marrying Emyr. But once they’re there, she’s just running around excitedly learning about the new world and nods along whenever the locals talk about Wyatt’s future marriage like it’s set in stone. Does anyone here know how to have consistent agendas??? Though she’s still a way better friend to Wyatt than he is to her.
Speaking of Briar and her parents, I’ve got a lot of questions to them. It was very nice of Briar’s mom to pick up a lonely struggling teen in a library and bring him home (I keep wondering how the family sorted out the legalities around it all, but okay, maybe Wyatt legitimately doesn’t care and doesn’t know). But it sounds like the family just literally tossed this teen into a room with their own teenage daughter and left it up to her to put him together, help him figure himself out, have a short-lived romance with him, become his codependent best friend, try to, in her own words, “be everything he needs her to be,“ etc, etc. Oh, and then they just let the two of them wander off with some winged, horned stranger. I have questions for these adult people. Big questions. Are they even characters, or are they just plot devices existing to make Wyatt and Briar’s story possible?
And the trouble here is, it could be a very good book! Such a good book! There’s SO MUCH potential here if only it got polished. I really loved all the poking at the fated mates trope—some of those moments were the most subtly done, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions, and I really liked how those were written. I liked Wyatt as a character, if not as a person; honestly, his unapologetic, unreserved anger at the trauma he’s faced was refreshing. I liked where his storylines with Emyr and Briar were going, although a lot more was fumbled by the execution here. I liked a lot of the rep. But honestly, if it wasn’t for the audiobook’s narrator being so thoroughly entertaining, I would have DNFed this halfway at best.
Graphic: Xenophobia, Death, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Deadnaming, Child abuse, Transphobia, and Sexual assault
Minor: Infertility and Miscarriage
hazel_oat's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Kidnapping, Xenophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Child abuse, Child death, Murder, Confinement, Abandonment, Classism, and Death
Moderate: Drug use, Drug abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Transphobia, Gore, Deadnaming, Sexual violence, and Violence
Minor: War, Hate crime, and Genocide
rmperezpadilla's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Xenophobia, Homophobia, and Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Transphobia and Drug use
Minor: Terminal illness, Sexual harassment, Sexual assault, and Sexual content
simplyammee's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Child abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Murder, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Infertility, Suicide, Cursing, Physical abuse, Death, Gore, Grief, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Xenophobia, Deadnaming, Gaslighting, Panic attacks/disorders, Transphobia, and Blood
Check the tw!! The deadnaming & misgendering in this book are done very compassionatelyabarnakwn_ourcolourfulpages's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Xenophobia, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Gore, Death of parent, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Deadnaming, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Cursing, and Blood
Moderate: Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Sexism, Child abuse, Slavery, Outing, Miscarriage, and Transphobia
Minor: Sexual content
fxnnxcs's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Xenophobia, Fire/Fire injury, and Classism
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Abandonment, Sexual assault, and Transphobia
kai1313's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Blood, War, Xenophobia, Domestic abuse, Hate crime, Police brutality, Abandonment, Colonisation, Homophobia, Murder, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Child abuse, and Violence
naomiysl's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Slow burn romance of friends to enemies to lovers that hits all the right touch points. And the drama is NEVER about the trans character being trans, only about all the other things surrounding their relationship.
Graphic: Violence, Xenophobia, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Sexual violence, Abandonment, and Transphobia
lyd41's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Xenophobia, Mental illness, Infertility, Gore, Grief, Gaslighting, Fire/Fire injury, Dysphoria, Eating disorder, Suicide, Violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Emotional abuse, Drug use, Deportation, Deadnaming, Death, Suicide attempt, Self harm, Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Blood, and Alcohol
Moderate: Transphobia, Vomit, and Police brutality
Minor: Genocide, Stalking, Physical abuse, Torture, Sexual violence, and Pregnancy
aexileigh's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Murder, Police brutality, Racism, Blood, Bullying, Classism, Colonisation, Deadnaming, and Death
Moderate: Drug use, Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Transphobia, Violence, Xenophobia, and War