Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Damned

Listen. I don’t even know how to review this book. My emotions were so messy when I finished it that my first instinct was to film a book review. That video will probably end up more coherent (somehow) than whatever I type here.

Long story short? The parts I enjoyed about this were the ones that stuck to tested and true vampire tropes. The whole will they/won’t they going on with Celine and Bastien that lead to some tasty tension as Celine tried to get closer to Bastien after she had forgotten him? Just a gift. The fact that Celine was resisting vampire charms forcing her to forget? Beautiful. The fact that we have traditional vampire versus werewolf tropes? Delicious.

The fact that we learned that Celine is half fae? Iconic.

The time we spend in the fae realm? Fascinating. The tension between fae and vampires? Perfection.

At the same time, though, the characters seriously got on my nerves in this book. Bastien’s character in particular started out really strong, lost me a bit in the middle of the book, and then got me again at the end. At first, I was thriving because Bastien was being incredibly petty. He was angry at his family for having turned him into a vampire, and he was taking it out on them. Honestly, I thrive on righteous anger when I agree with why the character is angry. In this case, I did. Bastien lost me though when he put on his emo vampire coat on. He needed to stop with that bullshit. He was pushing Celine away because he’s a creature of darkness and would take her from the light or whatever such nonsense. And I just needed him to stop. Eventually, though, Celine got him in line. So, I was able to love him again.

The other thing that got on my nerves in this book is that it’s trying really hard to sell me a love triangle that is so flimsy it disintegrates like paper held to a flame. What’s worse is that the love triangle made me think Michael had no self-respect. The man kept seeing how drawn Celine was to Bastien, how she only spent more time with him because she couldn’t remember Bastien, and he really thought Celine would choose him. Why? What on earth gave him that idea? He was in a different plane of existence if he thought that was going to happen. So, it just made the whole thing even more annoying. It felt like a waste of my time, and it tested my patience.

In addition, I feel like the author played me. Unless I had a stroke while reading book one, I thought Pippa was a lesbian. But it seems she’s either straight or another sexuality. But the author was emphasizing attraction to men in this book, completely dismissing the female character she had chemistry with in book one, and I felt like my brain was melting.

Anyway. At the end of the day, all I can say sounds incredibly negative...but honestly it’s what kept me reading. The hot mess these characters were was super interesting to me. I was invested in seeing what they would do next. I wanted answers. I continue to want answers. So, really, I’m thankful to this book for taking me on a rollercoaster of emotions. The rollercoaster may have made me want to fight the characters, but I still had fun.

P.S. Something I still don’t get is why Emilie would turn against her brother. Like. He was literally a child when their uncle failed to save her from that fire. How was that shit Bastien’s fault? How could she blame him for being born into a world that priced him more than her? And because she kept her distance, why did she expect him to grow up not acting like a man inheriting a legacy? In addition, she thinks Bastien asked to be turned into a vampire and that it was granted to him because he’s a man...but that wasn’t even what happened! I just don’t buy it. Not a bit.

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3.0

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