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karinapplesauce 's review for:
Juniper Unraveling
by Julie Belfield, Keri Lake
I waffled on this review for a little bit. I haven't read too many dystopian romances (as in--dystopian with gratuitous sex scenes, versus dystopian with a love interest) Is it leaning more toward a romance novel where I give it a "free pass" and don't even bother with a rating? Is it leaning more toward dystopia?
I've steered away from dystopian fiction, at least the hard core violent type as this one is, mostly for my own sanity. Occasionally I read some here or there, but it takes a lot out of me emotionally. This one definitely has some trigger warning scenes, horrifying violence as one can expect from a post-apocalyptic society. But here's the thing...I was okay with these scenes for the most part.
We are introduced to two POV characters - Dani and Wren. Dani's story definitely is the most horrific but the most interesting. Wren's story struggles with cloying insta-romance and very bad sex that Wren doesn't recognize as such (whyyyyyy). I started to suspect some sort of twist (as the author intended) where I actually got excited with some ever changing theories, that made suffering through Wren's awfulness worth it. Then twist happens--yes, I was surprised, but more than that I was extremely disappointed because there were some glaring holes to this and felt like a cheap way out.
Honestly, the whole Wren/Six section (the first half of the book) and the twist was so terrible for me that it tainted the whole book. Ignoring all the problematic points--if those had been done differently I may have had a different opinion about the book. Especially since I love to gobble up romance and I love new genres that aren't overdone. Too bad.
I've steered away from dystopian fiction, at least the hard core violent type as this one is, mostly for my own sanity. Occasionally I read some here or there, but it takes a lot out of me emotionally. This one definitely has some trigger warning scenes, horrifying violence as one can expect from a post-apocalyptic society. But here's the thing...I was okay with these scenes for the most part.
We are introduced to two POV characters - Dani and Wren. Dani's story definitely is the most horrific but the most interesting. Wren's story struggles with cloying insta-romance and very bad sex that Wren doesn't recognize as such (whyyyyyy). I started to suspect some sort of twist (as the author intended) where I actually got excited with some ever changing theories, that made suffering through Wren's awfulness worth it. Then twist happens--yes, I was surprised, but more than that I was extremely disappointed because there were some glaring holes to this and felt like a cheap way out.
Honestly, the whole Wren/Six section (the first half of the book) and the twist was so terrible for me that it tainted the whole book. Ignoring all the problematic points--if those had been done differently I may have had a different opinion about the book. Especially since I love to gobble up romance and I love new genres that aren't overdone. Too bad.