A review by noirverse
Violet Made of Thorns by Gina Chen

2.0

I was looking forward to this book, but it fell woefully short of meeting my expectations. It had all the elements for being an entertaining read, but none of it felt like it had any weight to it in the narrative. Shocking twists are glossed over in the matter of a few paragraphs, and we're told a countless number of things about the fantasy world and the relationships above being shown anything. The worldbuilding only feels relevant when the plot demands it to be so. The enemies to lovers dynamic being presented sounded great, but in practice, it was a lot of childish bickering until they start making out with little to no warning. The biggest problem with this book isn't that the ideas in it are bad. It's the fact that the ideas weren't developed nearly enough to feel grounded to a cohesive story.