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A review by vepowell
The Pawn and The Puppet by Brandi Elise Szeker
0.25
Spoilers and a very negative review ahead:
So... wow. The trigger warnings were nowhere near complete. The only LGBTQ+ rep was incredibly harmful. The writing was simply poor. Repeating words from sentence to sentence, world building issues, pacing issues. I honestly only read it because of the controversy- don't make the same mistake I did. Not worth the 6 hours it took to power through it.
The story arc wasn't so much an arc as a squiggly line that lost itself somewhere in the middle, and it felt like things that could have been a whole chapter were a page, like half the plot should have been held off to a second book. Also, for a "dark romance"... there's basically no romance, just some flirting mixed with poor representation of DID (by the authors admission). The final lines as some form of cliffhanger just felt like a desperate way to get the reader to read the next book.
World building wasn't really building, and the only component of the world built out was society's hatred of women and pushing them to an anorexic ideal that led to pain and death. The rest of the world? That apparently theres several continents, psychic powers that aren't psychic but are somehow just powers of observation, giant wolves and other magical type beasts... none of that was built out in any satisfactory way. It was just "look this society hates women and treats them horribly, also theres secret government organizations and stuff but let's just focus on this one asylum and the hatred of women".
So... wow. The trigger warnings were nowhere near complete. The only LGBTQ+ rep was incredibly harmful. The writing was simply poor. Repeating words from sentence to sentence, world building issues, pacing issues. I honestly only read it because of the controversy- don't make the same mistake I did. Not worth the 6 hours it took to power through it.
The story arc wasn't so much an arc as a squiggly line that lost itself somewhere in the middle, and it felt like things that could have been a whole chapter were a page, like half the plot should have been held off to a second book. Also, for a "dark romance"... there's basically no romance, just some flirting mixed with poor representation of DID (by the authors admission). The final lines as some form of cliffhanger just felt like a desperate way to get the reader to read the next book.
World building wasn't really building, and the only component of the world built out was society's hatred of women and pushing them to an anorexic ideal that led to pain and death. The rest of the world? That apparently theres several continents, psychic powers that aren't psychic but are somehow just powers of observation, giant wolves and other magical type beasts... none of that was built out in any satisfactory way. It was just "look this society hates women and treats them horribly, also theres secret government organizations and stuff but let's just focus on this one asylum and the hatred of women".
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, Fire/Fire injury, Incest, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Suicide, Adult/minor relationship, Death, Eating disorder, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Violence, Vomit, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Transphobia, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Confinement, Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Sexual assault