Scan barcode
A review by emilynied
Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
I'm sorry, I just don't get this book and it's MMC. Winter was the best part of this for me, so I'll start with her. I really loved the blindness representation and I think the author did a good job of making the story from her narrative realistic and still interesting. She isn't diminished as a role in the story because of her lack of vision and she was still capable of being part of the action and having an entire character arc revolve around her. I loved the descriptions of her dancing and feeling the music and sounds around her and I can't fault her for bringing a literal sociopath to his knees :)
I understand why readers enjoy dark romance and fictional romance so much - it's because it's not real. If it was real, we would probably all be questioning our sanity. I usually don't mind books like these, but I don't get the hype around Damon Torrance, I really don't. His background is dark and the things that he went through are horrible - it explains why he's so messed up in the brain. BUT, I don't think it justified most of the things that he did in the past and present timelines of this book. He tries to kill his best friends in the first book, in the second book he terrorizes all of them and now he's just forgiven. There are, of course, lingering effects and we do see that in this book, but I don't think it's enough. We start the story super abruptly with him getting control of Winter, her sister and her mother just out of no where in his quest to force Winter to be with him and I just think that's gross. He puts her in these weird situations and in my mind, controls her (not letting her leave the house, having security follow her around...). I was so turned off by the first part of this book because of that. I just couldn't fathom how we could go from this to a potential love story.
But, it did happen. I will say, I was kind of convinced towards the end of the book because he felt like a different character and everyone just *forgot* about all the shit he did. The character development just wasn't there for me to explain the switch up. Also, I feel like there was so much of Damon in Kai/Banks' book, but none of them are super prevalent in this book - I would have loved to see more of the present dynamic between him and Banks after it's revealed that they're siblings but that was definitely lacking here.
As far as the storytelling techniques, I think I'm getting a little tired of this series' flashbacks. They are about 50% of the book and particularly in this story, reading the past chapters was so exhausting because they just felt like fillers? I don't know exactly how to explain it but it feels like the present narrative is just waiting for the big reveals in the past, and until that happens, there's a lull in the story which got pretty dull. The present chapters relied too much on the past chapters in my opinion, which also contributed to the eh reading experience.
I understand why readers enjoy dark romance and fictional romance so much - it's because it's not real. If it was real, we would probably all be questioning our sanity. I usually don't mind books like these, but I don't get the hype around Damon Torrance, I really don't. His background is dark and the things that he went through are horrible - it explains why he's so messed up in the brain. BUT, I don't think it justified most of the things that he did in the past and present timelines of this book. He tries to kill his best friends in the first book, in the second book he terrorizes all of them and now he's just forgiven. There are, of course, lingering effects and we do see that in this book, but I don't think it's enough. We start the story super abruptly with him getting control of Winter, her sister and her mother just out of no where in his quest to force Winter to be with him and I just think that's gross. He puts her in these weird situations and in my mind, controls her (not letting her leave the house, having security follow her around...). I was so turned off by the first part of this book because of that. I just couldn't fathom how we could go from this to a potential love story.
But, it did happen. I will say, I was kind of convinced towards the end of the book because he felt like a different character and everyone just *forgot* about all the shit he did. The character development just wasn't there for me to explain the switch up. Also, I feel like there was so much of Damon in Kai/Banks' book, but none of them are super prevalent in this book - I would have loved to see more of the present dynamic between him and Banks after it's revealed that they're siblings but that was definitely lacking here.
As far as the storytelling techniques, I think I'm getting a little tired of this series' flashbacks. They are about 50% of the book and particularly in this story, reading the past chapters was so exhausting because they just felt like fillers? I don't know exactly how to explain it but it feels like the present narrative is just waiting for the big reveals in the past, and until that happens, there's a lull in the story which got pretty dull. The present chapters relied too much on the past chapters in my opinion, which also contributed to the eh reading experience.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Death of parent, Sexual assault, Death, and Sexual harassment