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artificialwater 's review for:
Kings of Quarantine
by Susanne Valenti, Caroline Peckham
I have some seriously mixed feelings about this book. Because, honestly? Part of me loved it. I know, I know, I gave it 3 stars, we’re getting there.
This book was intense as far as bully romances go. And I’m not exactly feint of heart. The boys go to some seriously screwed up lengths and have no sense of boundaries. Everything from filming and releasing the edited audio of a sex tape of the main character to destroying irreplaceable and priceless possessions of hers. Like things get seriously screwed up and so far the boys pay for none of it. They haven’t seen a single repercussion for any of the stuff they’ve pulled.
Besides that the guys get to a point towards the middle of end where we hear their POV’s that make them downright irredeemable. There are characters called the untouchables or something that the boys have stripped of their names and torment regularly just for the sake of it. Sure they all have a “crime” they’re paying for, but the majority of crimes are along the lines of one of them losing their temper and punching one of the main boys in the face (and hell, I’d love to punch one or two of those guys) or a boy having diarrhea during one of their parties. And these kids are completely disgraced by the entire student body because of this with no chance of coming back from it and are repeatedly publicly shamed and humiliated to the point that the kids are depicted as skittish and traumatized. But the worst part for me is that the main boys in our harem did this and don’t have an ounce of remorse. They don’t care that they have destroyed these peoples live at all. They think it’s /funny/.
I like my boys to be monsters, but I don’t like my boys to entirely lack any moral compass to the point that they think it’s funny to humiliate people for years because they had an accident at their party?? Maybe if the untouchables has actually done something wrong (and admittedly one of them deserves a lot of what’s happening to her) or if the boys seemed to feel any remorse or sympathy for the people they’re crushing I could get into it more, but wow these boys are burning in hell and they’re fictional characters.
I love a good bad boy, I love my demon boy, and books with straight up assassins in the harem, but damn. Degradation for the sake of degradation just makes me a bit ill.
Overall, it pisses me off that the boys suck so much because the book is pretty good, aside from a major Mary Sue main character and the unrealistic teens ruling the school trope I enjoyed the story. When I was seeing things through the main characters POV I even had moments where I kinda liked the guys or sympathized with them. But the minute you get a POV from one of them you remember how little they care about anything but themselves.
So sorry this was a whole ass essay but I needed to rant this one out because oof, this book was a lot. Good, bad, messy, emotional. If you don’t mind your boys utterly soulless then you might really like this one.
This book was intense as far as bully romances go. And I’m not exactly feint of heart. The boys go to some seriously screwed up lengths and have no sense of boundaries. Everything from filming and releasing the edited audio of a sex tape of the main character to destroying irreplaceable and priceless possessions of hers. Like things get seriously screwed up and so far the boys pay for none of it. They haven’t seen a single repercussion for any of the stuff they’ve pulled.
Besides that the guys get to a point towards the middle of end where we hear their POV’s that make them downright irredeemable. There are characters called the untouchables or something that the boys have stripped of their names and torment regularly just for the sake of it. Sure they all have a “crime” they’re paying for, but the majority of crimes are along the lines of one of them losing their temper and punching one of the main boys in the face (and hell, I’d love to punch one or two of those guys) or a boy having diarrhea during one of their parties. And these kids are completely disgraced by the entire student body because of this with no chance of coming back from it and are repeatedly publicly shamed and humiliated to the point that the kids are depicted as skittish and traumatized. But the worst part for me is that the main boys in our harem did this and don’t have an ounce of remorse. They don’t care that they have destroyed these peoples live at all. They think it’s /funny/.
I like my boys to be monsters, but I don’t like my boys to entirely lack any moral compass to the point that they think it’s funny to humiliate people for years because they had an accident at their party?? Maybe if the untouchables has actually done something wrong (and admittedly one of them deserves a lot of what’s happening to her) or if the boys seemed to feel any remorse or sympathy for the people they’re crushing I could get into it more, but wow these boys are burning in hell and they’re fictional characters.
I love a good bad boy, I love my demon boy, and books with straight up assassins in the harem, but damn. Degradation for the sake of degradation just makes me a bit ill.
Overall, it pisses me off that the boys suck so much because the book is pretty good, aside from a major Mary Sue main character and the unrealistic teens ruling the school trope I enjoyed the story. When I was seeing things through the main characters POV I even had moments where I kinda liked the guys or sympathized with them. But the minute you get a POV from one of them you remember how little they care about anything but themselves.
So sorry this was a whole ass essay but I needed to rant this one out because oof, this book was a lot. Good, bad, messy, emotional. If you don’t mind your boys utterly soulless then you might really like this one.