A review by pages_with_panda
Warrior Of Hearts by Beau Van Dalen

emotional funny hopeful sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I almost didn't finish this book. The writing was so awkward, with very little descriptions of anything, and just very loosely strung together situations that were so thrown together I felt lost about why anything was happening.

I honestly thought this was a webtoon or something turned into a novel with how things seemed to just happen to suddenly, but it turns out it's the opposite. The novel is being turned into a comic.

Anyways, we start the story with Alex, who is an artist for a video game and also a moderator for the game's forum. One night while online, he meets a user named Spicy who needs help at a party and instead of calling the police...This user logged into the forum and asked the moderator for help...?

Ignoring their initial conversation, the following conversations in their little chatrooms weren't all that bad. I could ignore the bad writing as someone who grew up online and did have strong friendships with people online myself.

But there were some major potholes where I genuinely didn't understand how things happened because we're given little to no description of anything.

 
For example, Spicy accidentally enters a public chat(?) calling for Alex (known online as Cloud) to spank him, and somehow Alex's IRL friend happened to be in that exact chatroom at that exact time and knew that Spicy was talking about her friend...? Like for some reason everyone uses this particular chatroom all the time and knows everyone else within the chat space? And there's only one user named Cloud online apparently?


There's also a big gaming convention that Spicy is excited to go to because he can meet his favorite artist, and while it's a huge deal to both characters, we skip over it entirely?

In fact, there's so many important pieces that we skip over that characters drop into the story later on....For example:

We don't find out until Chapter 27 that Alex was presenting as a super feminine person by wearing frills, skirts, and is also wearing a wig? There was no mention of any of that before hand and is only brought up by another character asking why Alex changed his style so suddenly. Near the end of the book.
 

The characters didn't really seem to have any chemistry with each other either. It seemed like they just fell for the first person who gave them any bit of positive attention and beyond that their relationship seemed so shallow. We're also left hanging about Alex's job at the end, if he continues to work there, if he moves on....Anything? At least David's chapter wrapped up with some thoughts of the future. 

Anyways, I did want to read more trans stories, but this one left so much to be desired. The HEA was alright though, and I did finish it so that's why I rated it a high 2. 
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