Review by megmei - A Touch of Darkness

megmei 's review for:

A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair

1.0

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

God this is so cringe. I don’t even know what possessed me to finish this.

It felt like someone was told their fanfic was good and then it got published somehow. I would not be shocked to find out St. Clair loves Lore Olympus. The whole time I couldn’t help but feel it was a bad rip-off. Not how you want you book to read.

I never want to be mean in my reviews. I always try to be constructive. But this was a true struggle for me to finish and I’m genuinely stuck trying to understand why this even has a 3.8 on Goodreads, because even if it’s for the smut, it’s not good smut. It’s boring smut. So what is the appeal?

Firstly, I’ll try and touch on the writing elements. The characters never feel real or believable. They were very shallow and inconsistent. The myth of Persephone is so rich with possibility, and it consistently gets watered down to “she’s sheltered but SECRETLY AN ANGRY BADDASS”! Please, I can’t take it. Frankly very little of this book felt grounded in any kind of reality - which, I know, it’s a smutty Greek myth retelling, why do you need reality, it’s not meant to be real. I know that, but without something to ground it, I just found I didn’t care about anything and the whole time I kept asking myself, why am I reading this? What is the point of dedicating this ‘story’ to paper?

Regarding the story, I don’t even know where to begin. There really wasn’t much to work with. Again, I understand it’s a smutty romance, but come on, if I just wanted smut, AO3 is literally free (and often better). There is a loose pretence of a contract between Hades and Persephone where she is supposed to ‘grow life’ in the Underworld but she can’t do magic, so she kind of half-heartedly waters a failed garden. Persephone works at a newspaper (why…? This has almost nothing to do with how she’s presented in mythology?) and this is one of the hardest suspensions of disbelief moments for me in the book because nothing about how her internship is presented makes any sense or feels like the author even has a vague idea of how a publication works? Which again, I hear you say “so?” but it just made it so painful to read. I’m a grown adult who knows how employment in an office works - and I could not suspend my disbelief enough to feel invested in this story at all.

Demeter as the primary antagonist is also lazy and cheap. I don’t understand why she keeps getting this treatment either. She’s just given the evil controlling mother trope but with absolutely no substance or rationality. There are some secondary antagonists but the conflicts with them are so weak it barely feels worth mentioning. Particularly the resolution with Minthe which was the most cringe-worthy ‘woman empowerment’ hamfisted chapter I’ve ever read.

Now I must address the romance and smut. “Megan!” you shout, “Surely you understand smut doesn’t need to be well written!” Then why was the smut also bad! The romantic relationship between both characters was nothing to write home about. Bland instant love relying far too much on the reader’s preexisting conceptions of Hades and Persephone to do most of the work, you never actually get to see their love grow on page, Persephone just kind of tells you they’re in love towards the end of the book. Other than that it’s just lust and several rushed and unexciting sex scenes. The author seems desperate to get through the scene from beginning to end as quickly as possible. Without going into detail to keep this family-friendly, there’s no warm-up, there’s very little romantic writing around the acts, and it’s done and they move on. Multiple times I found myself yelling at my husband “IS SHE JUST NEVER WEARING UNDERWEAR? HE JUST RIPS HER DRESS OFF AND THEY’RE AT IT.” Incidentally, every outfit Persephone wore got excessive explanation and yet ostensibly was the same thing: a fluid dress that skimmed her curves and had a deep neckline. And I guess yeah if you’re constantly wearing that you probably have to either have the best pair of SKIMS on the market, or go comando???

This is by far my least eloquently written review, but that’s ok, because I feel this matches the books’ content. If you’re a fan of this book, I’m sorry, I hope this doesn’t offend you. But I am, decidedly, a hater.

Content Warnings