Review by mrsdarcylynn - American Queen

mrsdarcylynn 's review for:

American Queen by Sierra Simone

3.0

dark fast-paced

A pretty strong 3 stars, I have to say.

First, this book is basically one sex scene after another. However, even with that writing choice, there is a surprising amount of straight up plot.

Second, most of the plot was unnecessary. The Eastern European war front worked for me as a political tension (not really a stretch to think there might be tensions near Poland/Ukraine) and I like that we weren’t relying on the Iraq/Afghanistan wars for our soldiers. However,

I think the author takes it too far when she has a diplomat from a hostile nation sexually assaulting our heroine. And then the heroine and VP have a long talk about their sexual pent up feelings and compare that experience to the one proceeding it? The only plus side, and I think the only reason it was included, was to point out the difference between consensual control and non-consensual control. I don’t think any of the readers were confused about this, an unnecessary scene.

There was also a lot of plot around the President, VP, and the VPs step sister mid-book that was unnecessary.

Honestly, this whole confusing bit that feels way out of scope for the book, is why in rating it so low. I think we could have skipped this whole “dark past” bit and really just used the one secret- that VP/Prez used to bone and that would have been enough. We didn’t need this whole mess too.

I totally missed the Camelot parallels until after I finished the book- so I can’t comment on how obnoxious or good that part was.

Content Warnings