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ceetje's review
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, and Violence
otterpebbles's review
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
olive2read's review
1.0
CW: violence, sexual and otherwise
Yikes. The pacing in this is GLACIAL and for such a short book, it was v v odd how much of it was spent in downtime or dead air. Also ... I’m super skeeved out by a book with a cop LI reinforcing the ACAB idea. Like ... I read a lot of cop LIs and I suspend my ACAB disbelief in order to do so but Alec is AWFUL. Constant displays of temper and physical violence and all very hand waved away as cuz he kinda has a thing for Lew??? Gross. There’s a scene where Lew shows up at the station and Alec—without saying a word—punches him in the face and beats him up, then puts him in a hold that nearly breaks his arm ... and 1) sexy that is NOT, 2) Lew is super mad in the moment but then after is like “nah it’s fine cuz I was in the wrong”, leading to 3) me as the reader being horrified and asking myself WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?????
Also—massive pet peeve—this is marketed as a slow burn romance but just because they like each other romantically (which is really hard to buy, see above) doesn’t make this a romance. The pace of the book is glacial but the romance itself is either non-existent (2/3 of the book the characters aren’t even interacting and first half you get almost NOTHING from one MC) or it’s wreathed in inexplicable violence that is not remotely attractive. They end on a note of “maybe we’ll work together to figure this out” which is kinda up in the air, considering the rest of the book.
Not to mention that the ending doesn’t actually resolve anything. It just sort of stops partway through a major plotline - like someone took a pair of scissors to a physical manuscript at an arbitrary point and called everything before the cut “book one.”
Yikes. The pacing in this is GLACIAL and for such a short book, it was v v odd how much of it was spent in downtime or dead air. Also ... I’m super skeeved out by a book with a cop LI reinforcing the ACAB idea. Like ... I read a lot of cop LIs and I suspend my ACAB disbelief in order to do so but Alec is AWFUL. Constant displays of temper and physical violence and all very hand waved away as cuz he kinda has a thing for Lew??? Gross. There’s a scene where Lew shows up at the station and Alec—without saying a word—punches him in the face and beats him up, then puts him in a hold that nearly breaks his arm ... and 1) sexy that is NOT, 2) Lew is super mad in the moment but then after is like “nah it’s fine cuz I was in the wrong”, leading to 3) me as the reader being horrified and asking myself WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?????
Also—massive pet peeve—this is marketed as a slow burn romance but just because they like each other romantically (which is really hard to buy, see above) doesn’t make this a romance. The pace of the book is glacial but the romance itself is either non-existent (2/3 of the book the characters aren’t even interacting and first half you get almost NOTHING from one MC) or it’s wreathed in inexplicable violence that is not remotely attractive. They end on a note of “maybe we’ll work together to figure this out” which is kinda up in the air, considering the rest of the book.
Not to mention that the ending doesn’t actually resolve anything. It just sort of stops partway through a major plotline - like someone took a pair of scissors to a physical manuscript at an arbitrary point and called everything before the cut “book one.”
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