Reviews

The Scandalous Letters of V and J by Felicia Davin

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spencerseas's review

adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

A thoroughly enjoyable read, if more spicy than I was expecting. Very fun gender play and an intriguing magic system. Clever prose, though not as emotionally resonant as the plot maybe could have been.

katieanne4's review

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4.5

I liked this a lot. The magic felt different but also coherent, the time period and setting were new to me, and I just loved v and j finding each other. Young love/lust, so sweet. I didn't love the epistolary format and might have even preferred like 80% regular story, 20% diaries and letters.

rupanjali's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-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

4.0

Content Warnings

aranzazugarcia's review

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adventurous emotional lighthearted mysterious tense slow-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

4.0

mollyringle's review

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funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious medium-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

5.0

Loved this book! The two protagonists (Victor/Victorine and Julie/Julien) are both magic-using gender-fluid citizens of Paris in the 1820s. The feel of the novel is like Balzac and/or Dangerous Liaisons (it shares the epistolary style in which Les Liaisons Dangereuses was written), but with more lovable characters, a happier romance, and a lot of lethal magical items (and a few vicious people) that have to be dealt with. Delectable, intriguing, and spicy. Fully my kind of thing. Go read it!

mahshid_aa's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

allusory's review against another edition

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2.0

As a big fan of Felicia Davin's newsletter, I was really excited when she announced a serialization of her newest novel via email and signed up right away. An epistolary novel of letters between lovers seemed like an ideal novel to read in daily emailed micro-doses.

Unfortunately while the idea was sound, this novel was a very slow read that I likely would have DNF'd if I weren't getting it in my inbox. I found myself continually hoping that a the pace would pick up and the plot would get more exciting. Part of the problem with the pacing, is that the primary POV character that starts the novel essentially disappears for a third of the novel and the POV switches entirely to the secondary character's POV. While this could have worked to heighten tension, unfortunately the MIA character is the one doing interesting plot relevant things while the other is mostly pining in their diary.

It didn't help that I found the central romance to be lacking. They fall in love very quickly and with little interaction, then spend most of the book apart writing pining diary entries that failed to prove compelling reading.