Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - A Witch's Guide to Fake Dating a Demon

Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

A Witch's Guide to Fake Dating a Demon by Sarah Hawley

91 reviews

bree_h_reads's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

1.75

Such a bummer I didn’t like this book, especially because the title and synopsis really pulled me in.

I thought it started out alright. The writing style felt a bit young, but the side characters and their dynamics and well-established personalities really drew me in. I also thought Mariel and Oz had a really strong potential for matching arcs, each in a relationship with a a parental figure that puts a lot of pressure on them to be perfect in their destined path due to innate powerful magic.

Unfortunately I just didn’t feel like the book effectively followed through with those parts of the book. The main characters didn’t feel as vibrant as the side characters and I had a really hard time buying into the romance, especially as the book kept mentioning how little time had passed. The relationship itself generally felt kind of toxic, where a character would establish a boundary and the other would throw a fit about it. This was especially apparent in Oz trying to avoid hooking up with Mariel and her being angry about it and constantly pushing on the boundary. Overall the relationship didn’t feel like one that would last and generally felt unhealthy. Also the relationship felt almost entirely based on sexual attraction, especially when the characters were pretty consistently hooking up at what felt like weird times. (Like girl you’re protesting the against destruction of an area vital to the survival of an endangered species this is not the time for a quickie with your demon bf against a tree.)

I was also surprised about how little the characters knew about the world they lived in, especially with how much info dumping happened. It just made the characters look stupid when they would learn something and immediately forget it. Calladia was the only character I really liked and felt reasonable and the book tried to skew her as unreasonable.

Overall, it had a lot of potential but just fell flat. I’m willing to try again and am hoping book two is better, but only because Calladia is the MC.

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