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sohare1981's review
5.0
So far I've loved all three books written by Jenna Moreci, and watch her videos on youtube a lot. Yes, there are some scenes that appear in both this book and the Saviors Champion, but that's because it's the same story, just told from a different perspective. Rather than rehashing the Savior's Champion the Savior's Sister is told from inside the fortress and gives details about the Saviors Tournament from the Savior's point of view.
Lelia is basically a prisoner within her own home. Her father plans to have her killed, and she must fight with all she can to protect her life and her realm. What she doesn't expect is to fall in love with one of the Tournament's competitors Tobias, the Artist. She kills anyone who is standing in her way of becoming the ruler of her realm and working with her father aiding his plans. Things turn darker when she learns some of her closest confidantes have turned against her but it doesn't stop her from fighting to protect her life, and Tobias's.
I would recommend reading The Savior's Champion before you read this story, as it goes into more detail about the competition the men are in, told from Tobias's point of view. Though I'm not sure if you really need to read it to understand what is happening in this story. The two do work side-by-side. So if you want to know what happens in many of the challenges and events that are just brushed over in this book I'd pick up The Savior's Champion and read that.
Lelia is basically a prisoner within her own home. Her father plans to have her killed, and she must fight with all she can to protect her life and her realm. What she doesn't expect is to fall in love with one of the Tournament's competitors Tobias, the Artist. She kills anyone who is standing in her way of becoming the ruler of her realm and working with her father aiding his plans. Things turn darker when she learns some of her closest confidantes have turned against her but it doesn't stop her from fighting to protect her life, and Tobias's.
I would recommend reading The Savior's Champion before you read this story, as it goes into more detail about the competition the men are in, told from Tobias's point of view. Though I'm not sure if you really need to read it to understand what is happening in this story. The two do work side-by-side. So if you want to know what happens in many of the challenges and events that are just brushed over in this book I'd pick up The Savior's Champion and read that.
elmakra's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
zedcaster's review against another edition
3.0
I really loved reading from Leila's POV. And I would argue that her POV was more interesting and engaging. I really didn't like that it was a retelling of the first book. I'd expect this for a spinoff or after the story had finished. But for book two?
The relationship with her father was really messy, in a good way. I liked seeing how her childhood shaped who she became and it made more sense as to why she made the decisions she did and why she didn't trust Tobias initially. The Sovereign, however, was hallow. We don't see his power on display as much as we should for how formidable he's talked up to be. He's more of a antagonist for Leila only yet he's meant to be an evil force Leila is trying to protect her country from. We see his motive, we know what he's up to at the end, but we don't know why. So why should we care? It sadly dampens Leila's arc into a game of cat and mouse with no real payoff at the end.
Besides that, I really enjoyed the "whodonit" flavor that this book brought from her perspective. I just think it had more potential.
The relationship with her father was really messy, in a good way. I liked seeing how her childhood shaped who she became and it made more sense as to why she made the decisions she did and why she didn't trust Tobias initially. The Sovereign, however, was hallow. We don't see his power on display as much as we should for how formidable he's talked up to be. He's more of a antagonist for Leila only yet he's meant to be an evil force Leila is trying to protect her country from. We see his motive, we know what he's up to at the end, but we don't know why. So why should we care? It sadly dampens Leila's arc into a game of cat and mouse with no real payoff at the end.
Besides that, I really enjoyed the "whodonit" flavor that this book brought from her perspective. I just think it had more potential.
zabthefab's review against another edition
3.0
The best thing about this book is that you get to relive all the fluff and tension and build up you loved in the first part. You get the perspective of the worrying party and relive all the angst and drama I love it, sign me the f*ck up.
Main point of critique: not enough Delphi, I'm in love with her
Main point of critique: not enough Delphi, I'm in love with her
artsygirl_'s review
3.0
This book series is edgier than I am used to, but I was entertained by the first book enough to want to know what happens. I think I prefer the second book because I like female point of view better and I was more interested in the palace life of the FMC overall. Anyway, I was entertained but wished that there wasn't a cliff hanger...
bloopers's review
1.0
1 star -- would've given 1.5 but as I wrote this review I started realizing how bad this book actually was.
This review does contain slight spoilers for the beginning third of the novel, but no big twists. Also be prepared for some unorganization with some typos here and there.
qn = quick note
tl;dr at the end
————
So lets get the formalities down really quick, I LOVE the cover of the book, along with the synopsis. I was prepared to be a bit bored since this was essentially TSC, just from a different POV, meaning the same tournament, same characters, etc. I was also prepared to get through the sheer length of all 560 pages, hopefully learning more about Thessen along the way!
What I was not prepared for was the disappointment I got from what was essentially a book full of fluff—yes there was some new information here and there but a very unsatisfying amount so. There were many opportunities to take this book to an upper level, but none of them were taken.
I'll get to the main problem of this book, the lack of character depth. I think Leila was supposed to be this bad bitch who would do anything to survive. Instead, I got some random woman murdering people and also was a healer for the first 3/4ths of the book. During that last fourth she finally starts to take action, but the previous events were just so unsatisfying that it passed onto this last section.
Leila's character wasn't well developed, especially her emotions. She follows the personality type of hard on the outside, soft on the inside. While I don't mind this, it's written in a way where it only shows that hard sadness, with only little glimpses of happiness coming every few scenes. Even if it is really like that for Leila, mainly angry and sad, the writing style doesn't capitalize on those emotions and delve deep into their roots, causes, potential change, or the realization that she will always be angry/sad. All these branches to take a character arc, and none of them were taken, and it sucks since I really do want to like Leila.
The same thing goes for all the side characters such as her servant group(Faun, Nix, etc), the entire Senate(the government rulers;Wembleton, Romulous, etc), and other groups I likely forgot to mention. While I understand that side-characters shouldn't be developed as much since they won't be featured as often, it would be nice to have something.(qn: there is a glimmer of hope, Cosmina! One of the Savior's sisters, down a few paras from here)
Since I'm on the topic of characters, I'll go to Tobias and his & Leila's romance. I don't really have much to say about him. He's Tobias, a kind respectful man who's fighting for his family and has a big cock, I barely get to know about him.
(qn: I absolutely hate the amount of times the word "cock" is used. I get that it's better than something like "member" and that the characters are living in a different society so they might use different words, but once you hear/read it so many times it becomes weirdly distorted and uncomfy)
On the topic of romance, it was, like all these characters, underdeveloped. It was more of an insta-love type romance which isn't my personal tastes, but it's okay. There was still time to develop the romance itself, right? All the time used was just a waste of them talking about unimportant events that didn't add character and romance depth which was especially disappointing for Tobias since this was his only source of his development, at least in TSS.
Yes, he does have a whole book based on his POV, but I don't remember that. This leads into something else: how I hoped to refresh my memory on who Tobias was, how the tournament was doing, etc. Like every chapter there would be some scroll or whatever that said something like: "___ died because of ___. ___ won the challenge, expect his reward of ___ soon"
Instead we get the Proctor, Romulous, telling a somewhat informational two-sentence summary of the tournament for like 3 chapters until he just suddenly stops, likely due to plot.
Before I get onto other things, I wanna talk about Cosmia, the sister Leila trades her spot of Savior with. I loved her character, she had this distinct minipulative-royal like voice and I wished that the other characters had this distinction. She is like the perfect combination of a queen, being horny, and manipulation all at the same time and I just wish her backstory was more delved into.
Now, finally, to the plot. It was like so many things would happen, but nothing at the same time. Now to get a few things straight so nobody will be confused, I'll quickly explain what Leila does during the first maybe 3/4ths of the book(this is where the slight spoilers come in):
After learning that she is to die, Leila starts torturing and killing the Senators for information. She recruits Romulous and Wembleton and threatens their life to do some tasks, but overall they're not important. With that explained, lets go on.
Lets say Leila plans to torture a senator. First she wakes up and goes to a Senate meeting where she learns about unmeaningful information about trade, etc. Then she goes and does the deed and gets the information, and barely useful information at that, either vague or unneeded. As a "reward," Leila gets some alone time with Tobias which is also unhelpful in terms of romance and character development. While that's going on, Leila has all these thoughts about what she should do next, how she should go forward, etc, and while I get that path, it does tend to drag on due to other banter with side characters, This is what I mean, so many conversations and actions are happening, but at the end of the day, barely anything is given, say for a secret or rarely two.
I dealt with this for a long time until it just kept going and going and eventually got bored. The information was still so miniscule, I didn't feel any connection or romance between Tobias and Leila, and eventually, the only reason I was reading was because of the hope that it would get better.
It did get better. On chapter 33, The Culmination, 524 pages in the hardcover version of the book. It was also the second-to-last chapter, and quite possibly the only good one since it had drama, twists, good communication, and everything was simply perfect from these 20~ pages.
The thing is, that perfection came too late. 524 pages of trudging through unmeaningful filler, just to get 20 pages of goodness which would soon simply go away in the next(and last) chapter.
This kinda goes with plot, the writing. I liked it, it was engaging, but the content it was included in was boring. It was also descriptive, perhaps too descriptive, but other than that it was... fine. I honestly don't know what to say about this, it was just fine. Oh yeah - the dialogue was written weirdly. I don't know if it was because of word choice, but it constantly changed from 30 - 17 - 25 yrs old which gave me a bit of whiplash.
Now I wanna get into the worldbuilding. There doesn't seem to be any uniqueness from Thessen to somewhere like the U.S. They supposedly eat the same things, speak the same language, wear more-or-less the same clothes the main difference being the inclusion of magic. There is one other nation in particular, Khovaria. They have multiple different dialects, unsure on the food, but do wear different clothes, more focused on practicality than reality.
Now for my one last disappointment, the government. I hoped to learn more about the ins and outs of Thessen because Leila was constantly involved in Senate meetings talking about trade, financial, and other problems. The thing is, all of the information was so *boring*. There wasn't even a bit of drama to keep me interested in all of the boring stuff. This could've been to empathize that Thessen was a perfect nation, but my thoughts constantly moved to other topics like a different dark-fantasy romance novel I could've gotten instead of this one.
---
tl;dr - Promising plot but all contents disappointed me as it was essentially filler and a bridge for the third book. Perhaps a third of the book could be removed and it would be the same. Okay writing, weird dialogue but compensated with good description. Characters were VERY poorly developed(especially Leila), with no knowledge about any of them, along with no unique voices say for a few side characters. Poor romance too; insta-love and I felt no connection during any of their interactions. Poor worldbuilding too, Thessen didn't feel unique and barely anything is learned about it here.
I would strongly recommend not getting this book unless you wanna give Moreci a kind of thanks for giving writing advice, but even so there's still her Patreon and merch store, but in the end it's up to you if you follow a bad or good review.
---
(Unrelated) I'll probably still get TSA(which I'm like 99% sure is The Saviors Assassin) since Leila and Tobias will *FINALLY* get into more of the world (mostly) alone. This means so many more chances to develop characters, romance, and worldbuilding. If this book somehow flops, then all hope for this series is just completely gone for me.
This review does contain slight spoilers for the beginning third of the novel, but no big twists. Also be prepared for some unorganization with some typos here and there.
qn = quick note
tl;dr at the end
————
So lets get the formalities down really quick, I LOVE the cover of the book, along with the synopsis. I was prepared to be a bit bored since this was essentially TSC, just from a different POV, meaning the same tournament, same characters, etc. I was also prepared to get through the sheer length of all 560 pages, hopefully learning more about Thessen along the way!
What I was not prepared for was the disappointment I got from what was essentially a book full of fluff—yes there was some new information here and there but a very unsatisfying amount so. There were many opportunities to take this book to an upper level, but none of them were taken.
I'll get to the main problem of this book, the lack of character depth. I think Leila was supposed to be this bad bitch who would do anything to survive. Instead, I got some random woman murdering people and also was a healer for the first 3/4ths of the book. During that last fourth she finally starts to take action, but the previous events were just so unsatisfying that it passed onto this last section.
Leila's character wasn't well developed, especially her emotions. She follows the personality type of hard on the outside, soft on the inside. While I don't mind this, it's written in a way where it only shows that hard sadness, with only little glimpses of happiness coming every few scenes. Even if it is really like that for Leila, mainly angry and sad, the writing style doesn't capitalize on those emotions and delve deep into their roots, causes, potential change, or the realization that she will always be angry/sad. All these branches to take a character arc, and none of them were taken, and it sucks since I really do want to like Leila.
The same thing goes for all the side characters such as her servant group(Faun, Nix, etc), the entire Senate(the government rulers;Wembleton, Romulous, etc), and other groups I likely forgot to mention. While I understand that side-characters shouldn't be developed as much since they won't be featured as often, it would be nice to have something.(qn: there is a glimmer of hope, Cosmina! One of the Savior's sisters, down a few paras from here)
Since I'm on the topic of characters, I'll go to Tobias and his & Leila's romance. I don't really have much to say about him. He's Tobias, a kind respectful man who's fighting for his family and has a big cock, I barely get to know about him.
(qn: I absolutely hate the amount of times the word "cock" is used. I get that it's better than something like "member" and that the characters are living in a different society so they might use different words, but once you hear/read it so many times it becomes weirdly distorted and uncomfy)
On the topic of romance, it was, like all these characters, underdeveloped. It was more of an insta-love type romance which isn't my personal tastes, but it's okay. There was still time to develop the romance itself, right? All the time used was just a waste of them talking about unimportant events that didn't add character and romance depth which was especially disappointing for Tobias since this was his only source of his development, at least in TSS.
Yes, he does have a whole book based on his POV, but I don't remember that. This leads into something else: how I hoped to refresh my memory on who Tobias was, how the tournament was doing, etc. Like every chapter there would be some scroll or whatever that said something like: "___ died because of ___. ___ won the challenge, expect his reward of ___ soon"
Instead we get the Proctor, Romulous, telling a somewhat informational two-sentence summary of the tournament for like 3 chapters until he just suddenly stops, likely due to plot.
Before I get onto other things, I wanna talk about Cosmia, the sister Leila trades her spot of Savior with. I loved her character, she had this distinct minipulative-royal like voice and I wished that the other characters had this distinction. She is like the perfect combination of a queen, being horny, and manipulation all at the same time and I just wish her backstory was more delved into.
Now, finally, to the plot. It was like so many things would happen, but nothing at the same time. Now to get a few things straight so nobody will be confused, I'll quickly explain what Leila does during the first maybe 3/4ths of the book(this is where the slight spoilers come in):
After learning that she is to die, Leila starts torturing and killing the Senators for information. She recruits Romulous and Wembleton and threatens their life to do some tasks, but overall they're not important. With that explained, lets go on.
Lets say Leila plans to torture a senator. First she wakes up and goes to a Senate meeting where she learns about unmeaningful information about trade, etc. Then she goes and does the deed and gets the information, and barely useful information at that, either vague or unneeded. As a "reward," Leila gets some alone time with Tobias which is also unhelpful in terms of romance and character development. While that's going on, Leila has all these thoughts about what she should do next, how she should go forward, etc, and while I get that path, it does tend to drag on due to other banter with side characters, This is what I mean, so many conversations and actions are happening, but at the end of the day, barely anything is given, say for a secret or rarely two.
I dealt with this for a long time until it just kept going and going and eventually got bored. The information was still so miniscule, I didn't feel any connection or romance between Tobias and Leila, and eventually, the only reason I was reading was because of the hope that it would get better.
It did get better. On chapter 33, The Culmination, 524 pages in the hardcover version of the book. It was also the second-to-last chapter, and quite possibly the only good one since it had drama, twists, good communication, and everything was simply perfect from these 20~ pages.
The thing is, that perfection came too late. 524 pages of trudging through unmeaningful filler, just to get 20 pages of goodness which would soon simply go away in the next(and last) chapter.
This kinda goes with plot, the writing. I liked it, it was engaging, but the content it was included in was boring. It was also descriptive, perhaps too descriptive, but other than that it was... fine. I honestly don't know what to say about this, it was just fine. Oh yeah - the dialogue was written weirdly. I don't know if it was because of word choice, but it constantly changed from 30 - 17 - 25 yrs old which gave me a bit of whiplash.
Now I wanna get into the worldbuilding. There doesn't seem to be any uniqueness from Thessen to somewhere like the U.S. They supposedly eat the same things, speak the same language, wear more-or-less the same clothes the main difference being the inclusion of magic. There is one other nation in particular, Khovaria. They have multiple different dialects, unsure on the food, but do wear different clothes, more focused on practicality than reality.
Now for my one last disappointment, the government. I hoped to learn more about the ins and outs of Thessen because Leila was constantly involved in Senate meetings talking about trade, financial, and other problems. The thing is, all of the information was so *boring*. There wasn't even a bit of drama to keep me interested in all of the boring stuff. This could've been to empathize that Thessen was a perfect nation, but my thoughts constantly moved to other topics like a different dark-fantasy romance novel I could've gotten instead of this one.
---
tl;dr - Promising plot but all contents disappointed me as it was essentially filler and a bridge for the third book. Perhaps a third of the book could be removed and it would be the same. Okay writing, weird dialogue but compensated with good description. Characters were VERY poorly developed(especially Leila), with no knowledge about any of them, along with no unique voices say for a few side characters. Poor romance too; insta-love and I felt no connection during any of their interactions. Poor worldbuilding too, Thessen didn't feel unique and barely anything is learned about it here.
I would strongly recommend not getting this book unless you wanna give Moreci a kind of thanks for giving writing advice, but even so there's still her Patreon and merch store, but in the end it's up to you if you follow a bad or good review.
---
(Unrelated) I'll probably still get TSA(which I'm like 99% sure is The Saviors Assassin) since Leila and Tobias will *FINALLY* get into more of the world (mostly) alone. This means so many more chances to develop characters, romance, and worldbuilding. If this book somehow flops, then all hope for this series is just completely gone for me.
miariinfinityreads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
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
3.0
red_sky's review
1.0
I had so much hope for this book. I was so excited leading up the release, but I could not be more disappointed.
Nowhere did it say that this was a retelling of TSC. I specifically avoided reviews because I didn't want to see spoilers, but I think that should have been more clear. It is misleading to label it book 2 establishing expectations of a sequel.
***spoilers****
I rated THC 5 starts when I read it and it became one of my favorite books despite some flaws. This book however has actually ruined the first books for me as well.
The savior was so selfish, shallow, and one dimensional. Her whole motivation for not telling Tobias that she is the savior is because he says 'he hates the savior' when he is clearly referring to Cosima. Because of that she let's him go to his death in the arena without a blessing because she is throwing a tantrum.
At least in TSC it was ambiguous enough that I assumed Leila had some good reason for everything she did that would be explained later. Well, this book explained her every thought and her reasons were just as shallow and selfish as they appeared with nothing below the surface. She is mean and hurtful to all her friends which she thinks of as servants but yet the still loved her unconditionally, cause reasons I guess.
The sovereign was one of the worst villains I have ever read. In the first book I though he was a good B plot villain. Scary and in the background but he wasn't the main threat to Tobias (the tournament was.) The sovereign is a mustache twirling villain with no thought behind his actions. His entire motivation are just to hurt Leila because he is eeevil. He openly hates and undermines her but yet the people of the palace are shocked that he isn't this loving father. He goes out of his way to kill the artist even though there is no reason reason to other than to make Leila suffer. This is not the plans of a smart leader who (in my opinion) would be happy Leila is distracted making it easier to carry out his plans. How does killing the artist help him? And Im talking about earlier in the story when he wasn't a threat of actually winning, but simply someone leila liked. He only wanted to kill him for pleasure and to make leila suffer because eeevil. He had no depth and his plans were stupid and ill conceived (and no, that's not me saying I want a 3rd book from his point of view.)
Rereading the exact conversations from the first book was tedious and didn't add anything to the world.
The magic was inconsistent at best, and used mainly as a plot device.
The characters were inconsistent, especially leila, who claims to love Tobias but would then forget that there were even challenges happening until he came back to the palace covered in blood and disturbed.
There is more I could say about this book but over all it took things from the first book and over explained them into stupidity, retroactively distroying the actions and character motivation from the first book.
It would take a lot to get me to pick up book 3 considering every review on here seems to be paid for anyway. Very disappointed in a story and author I previously had a lot or respect for.
Nowhere did it say that this was a retelling of TSC. I specifically avoided reviews because I didn't want to see spoilers, but I think that should have been more clear. It is misleading to label it book 2 establishing expectations of a sequel.
***spoilers****
I rated THC 5 starts when I read it and it became one of my favorite books despite some flaws. This book however has actually ruined the first books for me as well.
The savior was so selfish, shallow, and one dimensional. Her whole motivation for not telling Tobias that she is the savior is because he says 'he hates the savior' when he is clearly referring to Cosima. Because of that she let's him go to his death in the arena without a blessing because she is throwing a tantrum.
At least in TSC it was ambiguous enough that I assumed Leila had some good reason for everything she did that would be explained later. Well, this book explained her every thought and her reasons were just as shallow and selfish as they appeared with nothing below the surface. She is mean and hurtful to all her friends which she thinks of as servants but yet the still loved her unconditionally, cause reasons I guess.
The sovereign was one of the worst villains I have ever read. In the first book I though he was a good B plot villain. Scary and in the background but he wasn't the main threat to Tobias (the tournament was.) The sovereign is a mustache twirling villain with no thought behind his actions. His entire motivation are just to hurt Leila because he is eeevil. He openly hates and undermines her but yet the people of the palace are shocked that he isn't this loving father. He goes out of his way to kill the artist even though there is no reason reason to other than to make Leila suffer. This is not the plans of a smart leader who (in my opinion) would be happy Leila is distracted making it easier to carry out his plans. How does killing the artist help him? And Im talking about earlier in the story when he wasn't a threat of actually winning, but simply someone leila liked. He only wanted to kill him for pleasure and to make leila suffer because eeevil. He had no depth and his plans were stupid and ill conceived (and no, that's not me saying I want a 3rd book from his point of view.)
Rereading the exact conversations from the first book was tedious and didn't add anything to the world.
The magic was inconsistent at best, and used mainly as a plot device.
The characters were inconsistent, especially leila, who claims to love Tobias but would then forget that there were even challenges happening until he came back to the palace covered in blood and disturbed.
There is more I could say about this book but over all it took things from the first book and over explained them into stupidity, retroactively distroying the actions and character motivation from the first book.
It would take a lot to get me to pick up book 3 considering every review on here seems to be paid for anyway. Very disappointed in a story and author I previously had a lot or respect for.
cegj's review
1.0
I hoped this would be better than the Savior's Champion, but it was worse.
Pros: This book did answer pretty much all of the questions and confusion that TSC left me with.
HOWEVER, companion novels should be able to stand on their own, and having to invest in another half-baked book for the other half-baked book to make sense is nothing but a greedy marketing ploy. I can appreciate the full story of the Sovereign's Tournament now, but I should have been able to figure it out independently rather than relying on two 500 word books to tell one crazy, frustrating story.
Cons: The grammatical choice to capitalise all of Leila's pronouns was distracting and disorienting, and for me it had a huge impact on the readability, syntax and flow of the novel.
This book made me hate Leila and Delphi. There was so much wasted potential in these characters, and the story could have been so compelling, especially in the exploration of Cosima, who I think did a wonderful job at playing Savior. I would have loved to see Pippa explored more too—and not as "duckling", but as an adult woman. Her portrayal was extremely problematic for reasons I don't think I need to explain.
This book was riddled with misogyny and misandry, which was a huge problem for me simply because the characters couldn't even do that justice. To sum up TSS, I couldn't use anything but "shallow"—that applies to the plot, the characters, and the concept of companion novels in general.
And yet, I will be reading the next books in this series because I'm invested in seeing improvement in this story. It can be saved, and I really hope that Moreci takes the reader feedback on board and puts more effort into characterisation and intelligent plotting.
Pros: This book did answer pretty much all of the questions and confusion that TSC left me with.
HOWEVER, companion novels should be able to stand on their own, and having to invest in another half-baked book for the other half-baked book to make sense is nothing but a greedy marketing ploy. I can appreciate the full story of the Sovereign's Tournament now, but I should have been able to figure it out independently rather than relying on two 500 word books to tell one crazy, frustrating story.
Cons: The grammatical choice to capitalise all of Leila's pronouns was distracting and disorienting, and for me it had a huge impact on the readability, syntax and flow of the novel.
This book made me hate Leila and Delphi. There was so much wasted potential in these characters, and the story could have been so compelling, especially in the exploration of Cosima, who I think did a wonderful job at playing Savior. I would have loved to see Pippa explored more too—and not as "duckling", but as an adult woman. Her portrayal was extremely problematic for reasons I don't think I need to explain.
This book was riddled with misogyny and misandry, which was a huge problem for me simply because the characters couldn't even do that justice. To sum up TSS, I couldn't use anything but "shallow"—that applies to the plot, the characters, and the concept of companion novels in general.
And yet, I will be reading the next books in this series because I'm invested in seeing improvement in this story. It can be saved, and I really hope that Moreci takes the reader feedback on board and puts more effort into characterisation and intelligent plotting.