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nikitanavalkar 's review for:
Captive in the Underworld
by Lianyu Tan
2.5 Stars
I so wanted to love this one, as a Hades-Persephone retelling and also because it was a dark FF romance. But alas. A. I should not have read it so soon after ACOMAF, and B. Maybe I went in with all the wrong expectations? I don’t know. Because I didn’t feel the romance coming off the page at all. Is it just me or do authors shy away from writing actual, searing chemistry in FF romances? I mean they’re enemies who turn lovers with great reluctance, at least on Persephone’s part, so I’d expect loads of tension, but they’re just...boring. Their relationship just fell flat for me, neither living up to its dark promise nor to its fantastical tension-y yearning. They just didn’t seem that into each other, all said and done.
The setting is appropriately dreary yet evocative, and the writing is poetic and beautiful, but none of it could hold my attention. There was very little character development, we especially hardly get to know Hades even though she’s the more interesting of the two. I suppose it’s in trying to stay true to the myths, but Persephone’s naïveté and innocence, to a fault, gets annoying real fast. I was tired of her by the end of it.
I so wanted to love this one, as a Hades-Persephone retelling and also because it was a dark FF romance. But alas. A. I should not have read it so soon after ACOMAF, and B. Maybe I went in with all the wrong expectations? I don’t know. Because I didn’t feel the romance coming off the page at all. Is it just me or do authors shy away from writing actual, searing chemistry in FF romances? I mean they’re enemies who turn lovers with great reluctance, at least on Persephone’s part, so I’d expect loads of tension, but they’re just...boring. Their relationship just fell flat for me, neither living up to its dark promise nor to its fantastical tension-y yearning. They just didn’t seem that into each other, all said and done.
The setting is appropriately dreary yet evocative, and the writing is poetic and beautiful, but none of it could hold my attention. There was very little character development, we especially hardly get to know Hades even though she’s the more interesting of the two. I suppose it’s in trying to stay true to the myths, but Persephone’s naïveté and innocence, to a fault, gets annoying real fast. I was tired of her by the end of it.