Scan barcode
A review by abby_gail_noel
A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair
2.0
Dear anyone who rated this a four or five,
Blink twice if you need help. Really…
Love,
A concerned fellow reader
In all seriousness, this book was not a very pleasant read. The only reason I gave it a two and not a one is because I got it for free. If I had paid for it I would have felt cheated. I don’t want to put too much time and effort into this review because this book has already taken up too much of my precious time so I’m going to try to get through this as quickly as possible.
The first thing that struck me was that the world building was literally nonexistent. I was so utterly confused by the the structure of this scarcely explained society that it was distracting.
I’m sorry but I have to bring it up. I feel like every book like this is now a parody of the ACOTAR series and it’s getting tiring. I feel like I haven’t read anything original in this genre since I read those books (all you need to know is Hades = Rhysand).
Persephone was kind of an aggravating and shallow character. All I could think of was the phrase “pick-me” and she came off as needy and helpless. Her “empowerment” wasn’t really empowering and it made me a little sad. I thought she had good qualities, but it got to be too much listening to her act helpless and fight an obvious attraction for 20+ chapters. Hades was not a particularly great character either. Every attempt he made to “care about Persephone’s feelings” was surface level and always ended up with them much ignoring their feelings or having any real romance and skipping right to the spice. He wasn’t classical “evil Hades” but I can’t recall him expressing one thing he liked about Persephone’s personality other than her being nice and he came off as selfish and a little entitled.
I don’t mind spice (and it was very spicy), but there was little emotional or romantic connection to feed those feelings and a lot of the scenes came off as too abrupt and not in the right context. They quite literally came out of nowhere and we’re used as a substitute for plot. I think it’s okay for a book with spice to have a plot and I thought this one had very little.
The “romance” was a little unbearable. I hate books that are marketed as enemies to lovers and there’s never an enemies phase. It was insta love if I’ve ever seen it. The enemies don’t become lovers in the first few chapters in a real enemies to lovers (also… I couldn’t be convinced they were actually in love beyond physical attraction if someone told me my choices were believe it or die).
The following are just some general icks… I thought if I read the words “carnal,” “primal,” “his eyes darkened” or “he growled” one more time I was going to explode… a couple of times was already too much and it got way out of hand (as in, they were in just about every chapter).
I could go on but I don’t think I need to. I’m ready for some romantasy that’s not a copy and paste insta love ACOTAR parody with spicy scenes you could literally put side by side and not be able to tell the difference between (I literally thought the audiobook had accidentally skipped back a few chapters at one point).
Anyways… sorry for the rant, but I really reeaaalllyyy wanted to like this because I have always loved Greek mythology, particularly these two characters, and it had the potential to be so much more than it turned out to be.
The end.
*takes bow
Blink twice if you need help. Really…
Love,
A concerned fellow reader
In all seriousness, this book was not a very pleasant read. The only reason I gave it a two and not a one is because I got it for free. If I had paid for it I would have felt cheated. I don’t want to put too much time and effort into this review because this book has already taken up too much of my precious time so I’m going to try to get through this as quickly as possible.
The first thing that struck me was that the world building was literally nonexistent. I was so utterly confused by the the structure of this scarcely explained society that it was distracting.
I’m sorry but I have to bring it up. I feel like every book like this is now a parody of the ACOTAR series and it’s getting tiring. I feel like I haven’t read anything original in this genre since I read those books (all you need to know is Hades = Rhysand).
Persephone was kind of an aggravating and shallow character. All I could think of was the phrase “pick-me” and she came off as needy and helpless. Her “empowerment” wasn’t really empowering and it made me a little sad. I thought she had good qualities, but it got to be too much listening to her act helpless and fight an obvious attraction for 20+ chapters. Hades was not a particularly great character either. Every attempt he made to “care about Persephone’s feelings” was surface level and always ended up with them much ignoring their feelings or having any real romance and skipping right to the spice. He wasn’t classical “evil Hades” but I can’t recall him expressing one thing he liked about Persephone’s personality other than her being nice and he came off as selfish and a little entitled.
I don’t mind spice (and it was very spicy), but there was little emotional or romantic connection to feed those feelings and a lot of the scenes came off as too abrupt and not in the right context. They quite literally came out of nowhere and we’re used as a substitute for plot. I think it’s okay for a book with spice to have a plot and I thought this one had very little.
The “romance” was a little unbearable. I hate books that are marketed as enemies to lovers and there’s never an enemies phase. It was insta love if I’ve ever seen it. The enemies don’t become lovers in the first few chapters in a real enemies to lovers (also… I couldn’t be convinced they were actually in love beyond physical attraction if someone told me my choices were believe it or die).
The following are just some general icks… I thought if I read the words “carnal,” “primal,” “his eyes darkened” or “he growled” one more time I was going to explode… a couple of times was already too much and it got way out of hand (as in, they were in just about every chapter).
I could go on but I don’t think I need to. I’m ready for some romantasy that’s not a copy and paste insta love ACOTAR parody with spicy scenes you could literally put side by side and not be able to tell the difference between (I literally thought the audiobook had accidentally skipped back a few chapters at one point).
Anyways… sorry for the rant, but I really reeaaalllyyy wanted to like this because I have always loved Greek mythology, particularly these two characters, and it had the potential to be so much more than it turned out to be.
The end.
*takes bow