A review by alexluceli
Sapphire Sunset by C. Travis Rice

ok sooooo i’m not going to rate this book because i respect christopher rice too much. his debut novel a density of souls is everything to me, i love that book so much. ofc one of my favorite parts of a density of souls was the queer romance so when i heard that rice was releasing a gay romance novel i was like, immediately on board and it’s been sitting on my kindle since it came out. overall i went in with high expectations, expecting rice to do something, idk, new, i guess, but this was just a fumbling amalgamation of romance tropes that never really struck an emotional chord with me. it very much felt like rice was just having fun writing a pure romance novel, almost like this was a challenge writing exercise since it’s so different from his usual work, and i mean i guess that’s cool but it didn’t really “work” for me. this was an over the top read, like a caricature of a MM romance novel, and again, i never felt particularly emotionally impacted by any of it. i still love and respect rice but maybe i’ll stick to his horror/thriller novels. it’s not even that this was out of my comfort zone; if you know me you know that my main favorite genres are horror and romance. so ofc i was on board when i learned that one of my favorite horror writers was releasing a pure romance novel! unfortunately it just was a miss for me instead of a hit. oh well!