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imaginejolls 's review for:
Quicksilver
by Callie Hart
adventurous
medium-paced
I have many mildly conflicting feelings about this book. At first, I was surprised by how well-written it is over all! Through the first third of it I was having a lot of fun and making quick work of reading it, but... I wasn't buying the romance. Well, I wasn't buying the "enemies" bit of it - it didn't really make sense and wasn't well-established, which made several aspects of their dynamic tedious to read.
The first sex scene around the mid-way point of the book took me & my reading buddies all by surprise. I must admit it wasn't very well written; the pacing was all off and it simply didn't go with the scene leading up to it.
The problem with the romance, for me, is that there's this tonal dissonance between the rest of the book and the romance. As I said, the book is well written, I am very smitten with some of the world-building (it's impolite to show one's teeth, how cute!), but when it comes to the romance it just feels like the author tried to shove in as many tropes and kinks as possible, and it all just clashes together and makes a mess. Like there was a checklist of popular tropes the author had to squash into it, and it just isn't working. Also, because I am who I am, I think what would make this book a lot more interesting is if it were a why-choose and Carrion stayed in the picture, because he is a really fun element.
I'm not going to go into my thoughts on Saeris's autonomy and agency, or the way women are written in general, because we don't have time to unpack all of that...
The first sex scene around the mid-way point of the book took me & my reading buddies all by surprise. I must admit it wasn't very well written; the pacing was all off and it simply didn't go with the scene leading up to it.
The problem with the romance, for me, is that there's this tonal dissonance between the rest of the book and the romance. As I said, the book is well written, I am very smitten with some of the world-building (it's impolite to show one's teeth, how cute!), but when it comes to the romance it just feels like the author tried to shove in as many tropes and kinks as possible, and it all just clashes together and makes a mess. Like there was a checklist of popular tropes the author had to squash into it, and it just isn't working. Also, because I am who I am, I think what would make this book a lot more interesting is if it were a why-choose and Carrion stayed in the picture, because he is a really fun element.
I'm not going to go into my thoughts on Saeris's autonomy and agency, or the way women are written in general, because we don't have time to unpack all of that...