ghackman28 's review for:

By The Orchid And The Owl by Mariah Montoya

4.25

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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Honestly this was a super fun read. It’s not like the craziest innovation, and there’s lots of tropes, but it moves fairly quickly and kept me interested which was key bc I’m coming out of a reading slump. My two biggest icks were the sex scenes were sooo unrealistic and not in a oh they were too good way

more in a holy fuck she went from like kissing someone for the first time straight to sex with functionally no foreplay and no gradual increase in things

and that the magic system felt poorly fleshed out

like it felt super unrealistic that a mind bender could be in someone’s head literally all the time and see everything without caveat and also at a distance and also seemingly for as many ppl as they wanted, just feels too OP for them to not literally rule society lol. Also I think the pirate/faeries have all of the magics and if that’s not true and coen doesn’t have them ill be mad