Review by truequeenofchaos - Assistant to the Villain

truequeenofchaos 's review for:

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

3.0

funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

This was a read with my book club!

Imagine if a middle grade author wrote their take on a fairytale Hallmark romcom involving a villain, and you would get this book. Without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, I can say that I read stories with more substance on wattpad by 13 year olds when I was in middle school. There is nothing complex to be found here, as all of the characters and plot are very surface level. The Once Upon a Time comparison in the blurb is definitely pretty accurate! But hey, I enjoy cringe from time to time, so I truly can't say that this was a miserable read. I flew through the book! It was so unimaginably cheesy, but that’s what kept me entertained. It was the perfect thing to read after a disappointing book honestly. I mean he's really called The Villain and his soldiers are The Malevolent Guards, really? So dumb and corny that is almost circles back around to being hilarious.

As I said before the writing leaves a LOT to be desired, and I truly believe that publishing companies need to start gatekeeping who is allowed to become authors. Someone also showed me the tiktoks that these are based on and just...yikes, how does anyone find that entertaining? The characters all have very cookie cutter personalities with not much depth to them. The plot is very simple and not at all difficult to figure out. There is little to no world-building whatsoever, as other magical races aren't even mentioned until 70% into the book, and even then it's as a side remark about seeing them in passing. I think the author herself knew that people would not be hooked with this, because she ended the book on a very dissatisfying cliffhanger so readers would be enticed to pick up the next one. But alas, I do not care that much!

Truthfully, this 3 star rating is incredibly generous and it more likely deserves 2 stars. (Half star ratings when Goodreads?!) But as I said, sometimes cheesy cringe is entertaining, so I'll stick with 3 stars for now. But I would not really recommend this book and have zero desire to read from this author again.

Content Warnings