Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Silver Elite by Dani Francis

67 reviews

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated


Silver Elite is what happens when Divergent, The Hunger Games, X-Men, and Minority Report get into an anonymous telepathic group chat moderated by Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks from You’ve Got Mail, except with the spice levels turnt, and it's probably going to be one of the biggest books of the year. Hello debut author Dani Francis where have you been all our lives.

To set the scene, I had just finished Sunrise on the Reaping and was deep in that post-book mourning period, where I expected to DNF five books and fall into a spiral and had accepted that my next read would be The Great Disappointment.

Instead, Silver Elite said, “Get up, loser, we’re going reading.” And I did.
By 15%, I’d already been emotionally compromised, handed an entire sociopolitical structure, and exposed to themes of surveillance, systemic discrimination, a bit of genocide and the ethics of psychic powers.

That brings me to Wren, our FMC. Wren has got a gun 🎵, (sing it to the tune of Janie’s got a gun), a conscience, and one of the most entertaining internal monologues I’ve read in a while.
She’s a witty, sniper-trained telepath who has Professor X meets Katniss energy. Wren would for sure shoot an apple out of a pig’s mouth just to prove a point. She grapples with power, surveillance, and consent in ways that add depth beneath all the action and romantic slow-burn tension. She’s overpowered but she knows it. And she’s wrestling with what that means.

And then there’s Cross. He’s definitely going to take over BookTok by force. Tall, dark, hot and haunted. He was probably mixed in a lab where they blended Four, Xaden, and Rhysand.
Not gonna lie. Silver Elite does have some of your favourite well-used romantasy tropes. But they don’t feel tired. They feel reinvigorated and handled with narrative purpose. There is a whisper of a love triangle, but don’t worry, everything gets resolved fairly cleanly, handled like an adult (thank you) and I actually kinda liked it?

There's also an Orwellian undercurrent, but it never feels derivative.

In the spirit of full transparency, I saw the Big Reveal coming from very early on. In fact, I had it circled in red with arrows. But sometimes, seeing it coming doesn’t dull the impact. Sometimes it makes it better, because the anticipation is half the fun. And in this case, it hit exactly the way it needed to.

Nevertheless, I won’t pretend this book is flawless. It leans hard into its romantasy flair, so if you're after layered dystopian commentary or intricate worldbuilding, this probably won't scratch that itch. The dystopian elements stay pretty surface-level. So if you approach this more as romantasy with dystopian seasoning, rather than a deep dive into systemic collapse and profound dystopian themes, you might just fall for it too. For me, the romantasy lover in me was too busy blushing and kicking my feet like I was reading ACOMAF for the first time to care, hence my rating is definitely a vibes rating, rather than a critical one.

It's chaotic. It’s spicy. It’s emotionally intelligent and self-aware. There’s a quiet subtlety in the way it exposes the cracks in our world through the lens of another. This book gave me the same high I got from reading the romamtasy greats, while still feeling like something new. I devoured this as fast as I could whilst life and adulting got in the way. I will be camping outside Dani Francis's inbox until book two drops.

Thank you so much to Random House Worlds | Del Rey for the opportunity to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.



Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

EDIT:

CWs for the book: Dubious Consent, Sexual Assault, Rape (off page), Unbalanced Power Dynamics, Violent Deaths, Forced Conscription

First, thank you NetGalley and Del Rey for the E-Arc in exchange for my honest review.

Second, I am so disappointed.

I was having an amazing time until about ch 15-17, and then it all went downhill from there especially chapter 46 in what was the worst reveal of a century. This review was a lot longer but I've cut it because I don't want the CWs to fall on deaf ears because I am livid due to not having any CWs mentioned before.

I found the MMC, Cross, to be irredeemable. I never recovered from what he said to Wren after she was so desperate to escape. It would have been one thing if he had showed any kind of remorse or at the very least growth, but that did not happen. Every single time he and Wren had a scene I shuddered. And no, I do not care about the reveal. If anything that made it worse. Not to yuck anyone's yum but this was not it for me. If I had known how hard this leaned into Dubious Consent I would have stayed away. Had I known what was going to happen to Tana and her father I would not have touched this with a ten foot pole.

PLEASE ADD CONTENT WARNINGS! These elements were a very unwelcome surprise and it ruined the entire book for me. This was going to be a 4 star book for me and the undisclosed CWs made this almost impossible to get through.

0.25 Stars. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

If you enjoyed the post apocalyptic Divergent but wanted more spice then this book is for you. Wren (Tris) is one of the Modified and her power is telepathy. She's also been trained in combat and has much better than average shooting skills. She has been hiding her power on her ranch with her Uncle for over 20 years until one day her skills bring the unwanted attention of Command, the ruling class of "Primes" or unmodified people. I can't expand on more of the plot without giving away too much.

Dani Francis holds no punches and presents the FMC's flaws and vices out the gate. Wren's impulsive and wreckless nature drives the plot at the beginning but she keeps getting herself into trouble throughout, which was good writing on Francis' part because I was losing interest at Wren's inability to realize she is responsible for the results of her actions. There are plenty of plot twists to keep the reader interested and distracted from the FMC's immaturity, especially when Wren meets her Wolf (Four).

This is definitely the start of a series and the book ends with a HFN. Find the trigger and content warnings as many hard topics and scenarios are presented in the story, like death of a parent figure and mental illness. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced
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

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK for this eARC.

I’m still wondering how I feel about this book. On the one hand I’m desperate to read a sequel, having loved the last 60% of it, on the other, the first 40% was pretty slow going with lots of plodding info dumps I could have done without. Wren at first was also a tough character to like, making some poor decisions but I was ultimately won over by her later development. I’d recommend this to fans of “Powerless” and anyone who likes a strong female lead, the action is well written and the romance spicy. I decided to give it a 4⭐️, because despite its flaws, it still enjoyed my time reading.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional mysterious sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

This is not a return to The Hunger Games as an adult—that would require some coherent interrogation of the genre it claims. But, y’all don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance.

Reasons for the one star:

Wren, our fmc, is a horribly unlikable person.

From the opening scene, we get a taste of Wren’s selfishness, superiority complex, and tendency to self-sabotage. While “escaping” from a one-night fling, she actively leads the guy on while telling everyone else how clingy he is. He is a Command soldier—part of the military oppressing her kind (Mods). She hates and fears Command soldiers, but also seemingly exclusively seeks them out as sexual partners?

I like a little brashness in a dystopian fmc (see: Katniss). However, Wren’s impulsivity is not due to a strong moral compass or sense of justice—she acts selfishly, and everyone around her has to deal with the fallout. She genuinely does not seem to have any forethought about the impact of her actions on others—they are all NPCs to her. We don’t learn much of anything about her supposed best friend, so their friendship isn’t believable. And of course all male characters are introduced by how hot Wren thinks they are instead of by normal physical descriptions.

I’m all for complex, varied, and even unlikable fmcs when it makes sense for the story. But there is no indication that the reader is supposed to be actively rooting against Wren as much as I was. She’s entirely unrelatable—and please, may this friendship never find me.

Cinder blocks and exposed pipes do not a dystopia make.

Silver Elite does the same thing I take issue with in many recent romantasy hits: the potentially interesting dystopian and sci-fi elements are an afterthought. They’re only developed and utilized insofar as is necessary to put the fmc and love interest into tropey scenarios (in the vein of playing Barbies as a kid and trying to make the Barbies kiss). I was truly intrigued by the promise of a dystopian world with an oppressive regime and an fmc with hidden abilities infiltrating the regime’s elite military squad. However, the author was clearly not interested in the political commentary that is inherent to the genre. For example, Wren notes that the Company is a “military machine” but its leader, the General, “has no need for politics or superfluous job titles.” This is just a bunch of handwaving to avoid the inherent politics of the world—partly because I think if the politics were explored at all, it’d be clearer that this is an unintentional villain origin story.

The romance = The Worst Couple You Know.

Wren and the main love interest are just terrible people being insufferable together and making it everyone else’s problem. It’s insta-lust, it’s toxic, it’s shallow. It’s 40 tropes in a book box special edition trench coat. The love interest has zero personality and is all inappropriate comments. (He’s also just really bad at his job?) And because the world building is generic and the stakes are not believable, the “enemies to lovers” is just giving sexual harassment in the workplace. This is copy paste the same romantasy couple we always get (right down to the tattoos and a certain special connection—iykyk).

Silver Elite is set to publish May 6, 2025, and is the first of a planned series.

eARC provided by NetGalley and Del Rey for review.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings