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A review by miasantos
A Lesson in Thorns by Sierra Simone
1.0
thanks I hate it!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“We are still talking about the ceremony, right? Not real life?”
She lifts her finger and slides off my bed. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? It’s all real life.”
* cracks knuckles * okay let's do this shall we?
this was mh... not good? man, where do I even start. this book irked me up from page one, the writing is absolutely unbearable to me, the plot is holy and lowkey nonexistent, the characters either incredibly dull or way too good to be in such a bad book... I just- *sigh*...
allow me to elaborate and consult my 8 pages of notes and decide where to even start complaining.
okay, the writing:
- repetitive to no end, this lady needs to read literally any book in order to learn there are other connective words that aren't "and". if i could get a coin for every time she writes "he went there and did this and met that person and ate an apple and sat down." I would be living in a 12 bedroom mansion with a 25 hectare backyard that leads to my private lake. also the word "thorn" or some variant of the same is used around 30 times (I counted!) in 340 pages, that's about one use every 10 pages and I am choosing to not count it when it's used to describe something or in the name of a location (which btw, no matter where you go in this book there's "thorn" in the title, no it's not exclusive to Thornchapel like I thought it would be, so do run while you have the chance. I didn't and boy do I have regrets).
- SS does not understand the concept of commas or when to use them, I would go further and risk saying she doesn't understand punctuation because from what i read - no one is save.
- there are actual typos in this book which isn't necessarily the author's fault but hindered my enjoyment even more because they were the grain of salt I did not need given how salty I was about it already.
the characters:
- Proserpina (Poe): this girl is insufferable. I cannot for the sake of me think of a redeemable quality of hers, she travels from home to Thornchapel under the pretext of finding more about her mum’s disappearance but once she gets there she nearly forgets entirely about it and we just suffer through 300 pages of her pinning over every living being that gets so much as a hand on her shoulder. Oh and I was already writing the last character on this list when I remembered she is a librarian, yeah that’s how developed these characters are.
- Auden: interesting enough I guess, underused and a total dickhead for no apparent reason (although in the end we get a half assed excuse along the lines of “oh he’s a Dom that’s why he’s like this and tbh offensive? hurtful? I don’t know the first thing about BDSM but I don’t think your role in the bedroom is an excuse to be a total asshole to people, but could be me). He treats nearly everyone in his life like garbage, is constantly rude and we’re supposed to like him because this does not apply to his girlfriend? Oh wow what a hero, what a gentleman.
- Saint: this boy deserves a better book. By far the most compelling character, most complex and the only one I actually rooted for even though I am not sure exactly what I was rooting for him to accomplish because no character but Poe has a proper developed motivation that isn’t “I wanna have sex with ‘person’” or “I am having a sexual awakening”.
- Delphine: Auden’s fiancé. Bland, flat and given what is the saddest excuse for a rape story I have ever read like, really puts The Burning of Arbour to shame. Brushed away as fast as explained and used as an excuse to create tension between her and Auden and later to do the same with Poe. Handled extremely poorly and lowkey disrespectfully in my opinion.
- Rebecca: another character that deserves a better book. I would read a full series of her just being a bad-ass web-designer that is also, to quote this entire mess of a book, “a kinky Dom”. Underdeveloped, underused, under everything and yet by far the most enjoyable, realest and rawest character in this hot mess.
- Becket: literally the other guy. He mh, is a priest and likes books (?)
and finally, for the juicy part, the plot:
So we follow Poe who is moving to the US so she can investigate her mother’s disappearance 11 years ago. She gets a job at this house that belongs to a childhood friend of hers and she’s supposed to go there and organize their library which is like her wet dream or something… don’t get me wrong, sounds awesome but it’s dismissed so incredibly fast that I forgot it’s relevant (spoiler alert: it really only is relevant so she can go up a ladder and expose her parts to Auden which creates *tension*). So she goes and she is praying Auden won’t be there but surprise: he is. Who would’ve thought? And I’ll do you one more, all her childhood friends are there! Damn this book is filled with beautiful coincidences that aren’t explained or justified and it makes my skin crawl.
Once there she starts crushing again on Auden, developing a crush on Saint and wanting to sleep with basically everyone which is just this book’s plot, everyone wants to sleep with everyone but SS tries to make it whimsical – it’s not whimsical it’s annoying and hurts an already empty narrative. Parallelly (but not really) to the rekindling of her crush on Auden she starts developing a big one on Saint and decides he is the one she wants to lose her v-card to.
As the plot (haha) progresses we find that her feelings for Saint are reciprocated but he can’t sleep with her because the entire village thinks she is promised and a property of Auden’s which is just lovely. What are we today, ladies? That’s right, property to own! Delightful, but no only problematic as nonsensical, Saint refuses to have any sort of contact with Poe because he doesn’t want the village to not like him ☹ because apparently you can’t have sex 5 times in the back of your car without announcing it to the whole village? I don’t know guys, SS logic, just go with it. Because yeah, you could argue that Saint is looking for a relationship and therefore isn’t interested in just fucking around but Poe is not interested in it so there’s no reason she wouldn’t try and go for it, except of course drama.
At the same time as this goes on, we are introduced more in depth to the relationship of Auden and Delphine and to the fact that they don’t have sex, ever (which is later justified with Delfine’s rape but initially used to justify the reason Auden, who entered this relationship fully knowing that Delphine would have PTSD, is horny as heck and can’t keep it in his pants for the sake of him). So Auden is very busy pining for Poe and pretending it’s okay because they’re friends, hating Saint for some forsaken reason that never gets explained and is probably meant to build tension but in my case just built loathe.
Rebecca is… existing I think. And Becket is being used to be the target of some weird priest fetish, for the only scenes we get of him are either sweet interactions with Poe or disturbing descriptions of him wanking when he gets home after a long day of “looking priestly”.
Delphine then decides they should throw Poe a welcome party, and when on that party they decide to play “spin the bottle” and, at some point, Rebecca lands Poe and decides she’s gonna make her “earn the kiss”. Queue weirdly descriptive spanking scene where Poe is laying on Auden’s lap as Rebecca hits her and man, I’m not attacking BDSM okay, I’m not I swear. I am attacking bad writing and the fact that this scene was one of the most uncomfortable, anticlimactic things I have ever read in my existence and I won’t elaborate because I am already wasting way too much time with this but, yeah Poe gets them hands, Auden helps and yeah just go read it if you’re interested though I don’t see why you would be.
Delphine then has her sexual awakening seeing this play out and finds out she wants to be a sub, dumps Auden and goes for it. Sure girl, you do you.
So here we go into the “pagan rituals” territory I was promised. Yes, if you were wondering why I even thought of reading this book it’s because someone said, “there’s pagan rituals” and home girl ran there. Mistakes were made but moving forward, Delphine suggests them doing this ritual for poorly explained reasons but basically it consists in doing a fake wedding between “the lord of the manor” and his bride. So they decide randomly who plays who, Delphine lands lord of the manor and Poe is the bride (wow we all shocked what a twist). Queue awkward sex scene where they hit it off in the mud where Rebecca guides Delphine on what to do, absolutely lovely exchange of “virginity blood” where we get a total necessary and I imagine incredibly arousing description of the flavour of it and yeah… poorly written, kept me on the bridge between bored and extremely uncomfortable and when I finally crossed it to the later I ended up putting the book down and yelling “nonononono why just why nononono why why why why why nooooooooo”, people can confirm. This caused me physical discomfort and made me feel like I needed to shower to wash away this masterpiece of an orgy I wasn’t’ even a part of so yeah, great book go read it. Oh and, everyone got a hand in this and Becket just causally watched? I wouldn’t wanna be friends with these guys, I’d dump them.
Best part of this boo, by far, is when they’re still going at it and thunder falls on the chapel I genuinely laughed out loud at this part because I felt like the book itself wanted to end my misery. But nope, because immediately after this there’s a fight between our two favourite underdeveloped boys about who should give Poe a shower (because apparently she can’t stand after she has an orgasm (because she has a thing called narcolepsy which just makes her randomly fall asleep, more on that in a minute) and so they both shower with her, queue weird mutual masturbation scene that made me even more uncomfortable and I, as a woman, found disrespectful. And then queue something I like to call “delegated snuggling” which consisted in Saint cuddling with Poe (activity he needs to do bare naked because reasons) while Auden goes be the big man and check on the chapel. While he’s out? You guessed it! Saint and Poe do the devil’s tango (I’m running out of synonyms) and Auden comes back in time to catch them and decide he will stay away and go to Dom school where Rebecca (now Delphine’s Dom) is going to be the head teacher.
Morning after, Saint goes to the chapel and calls Poe there because he found what seem to be her mother’s body buried there *insert dramatic crying and written “cut to black”* which concludes this masterpiece of a book and leaves us with every. single. one. of the questions we went in with
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“We are still talking about the ceremony, right? Not real life?”
She lifts her finger and slides off my bed. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? It’s all real life.”
* cracks knuckles * okay let's do this shall we?
this was mh... not good? man, where do I even start. this book irked me up from page one, the writing is absolutely unbearable to me, the plot is holy and lowkey nonexistent, the characters either incredibly dull or way too good to be in such a bad book... I just- *sigh*...
allow me to elaborate and consult my 8 pages of notes and decide where to even start complaining.
okay, the writing:
- repetitive to no end, this lady needs to read literally any book in order to learn there are other connective words that aren't "and". if i could get a coin for every time she writes "he went there and did this and met that person and ate an apple and sat down." I would be living in a 12 bedroom mansion with a 25 hectare backyard that leads to my private lake. also the word "thorn" or some variant of the same is used around 30 times (I counted!) in 340 pages, that's about one use every 10 pages and I am choosing to not count it when it's used to describe something or in the name of a location (which btw, no matter where you go in this book there's "thorn" in the title, no it's not exclusive to Thornchapel like I thought it would be, so do run while you have the chance. I didn't and boy do I have regrets).
- SS does not understand the concept of commas or when to use them, I would go further and risk saying she doesn't understand punctuation because from what i read - no one is save.
- there are actual typos in this book which isn't necessarily the author's fault but hindered my enjoyment even more because they were the grain of salt I did not need given how salty I was about it already.
the characters:
- Proserpina (Poe): this girl is insufferable. I cannot for the sake of me think of a redeemable quality of hers, she travels from home to Thornchapel under the pretext of finding more about her mum’s disappearance but once she gets there she nearly forgets entirely about it and we just suffer through 300 pages of her pinning over every living being that gets so much as a hand on her shoulder. Oh and I was already writing the last character on this list when I remembered she is a librarian, yeah that’s how developed these characters are.
- Auden: interesting enough I guess, underused and a total dickhead for no apparent reason (although in the end we get a half assed excuse along the lines of “oh he’s a Dom that’s why he’s like this and tbh offensive? hurtful? I don’t know the first thing about BDSM but I don’t think your role in the bedroom is an excuse to be a total asshole to people, but could be me). He treats nearly everyone in his life like garbage, is constantly rude and we’re supposed to like him because this does not apply to his girlfriend? Oh wow what a hero, what a gentleman.
- Saint: this boy deserves a better book. By far the most compelling character, most complex and the only one I actually rooted for even though I am not sure exactly what I was rooting for him to accomplish because no character but Poe has a proper developed motivation that isn’t “I wanna have sex with ‘person’” or “I am having a sexual awakening”.
- Delphine: Auden’s fiancé. Bland, flat and given what is the saddest excuse for a rape story I have ever read like, really puts The Burning of Arbour to shame. Brushed away as fast as explained and used as an excuse to create tension between her and Auden and later to do the same with Poe. Handled extremely poorly and lowkey disrespectfully in my opinion.
- Rebecca: another character that deserves a better book. I would read a full series of her just being a bad-ass web-designer that is also, to quote this entire mess of a book, “a kinky Dom”. Underdeveloped, underused, under everything and yet by far the most enjoyable, realest and rawest character in this hot mess.
- Becket: literally the other guy. He mh, is a priest and likes books (?)
and finally, for the juicy part, the plot:
So we follow Poe who is moving to the US so she can investigate her mother’s disappearance 11 years ago. She gets a job at this house that belongs to a childhood friend of hers and she’s supposed to go there and organize their library which is like her wet dream or something… don’t get me wrong, sounds awesome but it’s dismissed so incredibly fast that I forgot it’s relevant (spoiler alert: it really only is relevant so she can go up a ladder and expose her parts to Auden which creates *tension*). So she goes and she is praying Auden won’t be there but surprise: he is. Who would’ve thought? And I’ll do you one more, all her childhood friends are there! Damn this book is filled with beautiful coincidences that aren’t explained or justified and it makes my skin crawl.
Once there she starts crushing again on Auden, developing a crush on Saint and wanting to sleep with basically everyone which is just this book’s plot, everyone wants to sleep with everyone but SS tries to make it whimsical – it’s not whimsical it’s annoying and hurts an already empty narrative. Parallelly (but not really) to the rekindling of her crush on Auden she starts developing a big one on Saint and decides he is the one she wants to lose her v-card to.
As the plot (haha) progresses we find that her feelings for Saint are reciprocated but he can’t sleep with her because the entire village thinks she is promised and a property of Auden’s which is just lovely. What are we today, ladies? That’s right, property to own! Delightful, but no only problematic as nonsensical, Saint refuses to have any sort of contact with Poe because he doesn’t want the village to not like him ☹ because apparently you can’t have sex 5 times in the back of your car without announcing it to the whole village? I don’t know guys, SS logic, just go with it. Because yeah, you could argue that Saint is looking for a relationship and therefore isn’t interested in just fucking around but Poe is not interested in it so there’s no reason she wouldn’t try and go for it, except of course drama.
At the same time as this goes on, we are introduced more in depth to the relationship of Auden and Delphine and to the fact that they don’t have sex, ever (which is later justified with Delfine’s rape but initially used to justify the reason Auden, who entered this relationship fully knowing that Delphine would have PTSD, is horny as heck and can’t keep it in his pants for the sake of him). So Auden is very busy pining for Poe and pretending it’s okay because they’re friends, hating Saint for some forsaken reason that never gets explained and is probably meant to build tension but in my case just built loathe.
Rebecca is… existing I think. And Becket is being used to be the target of some weird priest fetish, for the only scenes we get of him are either sweet interactions with Poe or disturbing descriptions of him wanking when he gets home after a long day of “looking priestly”.
Delphine then decides they should throw Poe a welcome party, and when on that party they decide to play “spin the bottle” and, at some point, Rebecca lands Poe and decides she’s gonna make her “earn the kiss”. Queue weirdly descriptive spanking scene where Poe is laying on Auden’s lap as Rebecca hits her and man, I’m not attacking BDSM okay, I’m not I swear. I am attacking bad writing and the fact that this scene was one of the most uncomfortable, anticlimactic things I have ever read in my existence and I won’t elaborate because I am already wasting way too much time with this but, yeah Poe gets them hands, Auden helps and yeah just go read it if you’re interested though I don’t see why you would be.
Delphine then has her sexual awakening seeing this play out and finds out she wants to be a sub, dumps Auden and goes for it. Sure girl, you do you.
So here we go into the “pagan rituals” territory I was promised. Yes, if you were wondering why I even thought of reading this book it’s because someone said, “there’s pagan rituals” and home girl ran there. Mistakes were made but moving forward, Delphine suggests them doing this ritual for poorly explained reasons but basically it consists in doing a fake wedding between “the lord of the manor” and his bride. So they decide randomly who plays who, Delphine lands lord of the manor and Poe is the bride (wow we all shocked what a twist). Queue awkward sex scene where they hit it off in the mud where Rebecca guides Delphine on what to do, absolutely lovely exchange of “virginity blood” where we get a total necessary and I imagine incredibly arousing description of the flavour of it and yeah… poorly written, kept me on the bridge between bored and extremely uncomfortable and when I finally crossed it to the later I ended up putting the book down and yelling “nonononono why just why nononono why why why why why nooooooooo”, people can confirm. This caused me physical discomfort and made me feel like I needed to shower to wash away this masterpiece of an orgy I wasn’t’ even a part of so yeah, great book go read it. Oh and, everyone got a hand in this and Becket just causally watched? I wouldn’t wanna be friends with these guys, I’d dump them.
Best part of this boo, by far, is when they’re still going at it and thunder falls on the chapel I genuinely laughed out loud at this part because I felt like the book itself wanted to end my misery. But nope, because immediately after this there’s a fight between our two favourite underdeveloped boys about who should give Poe a shower (because apparently she can’t stand after she has an orgasm (because she has a thing called narcolepsy which just makes her randomly fall asleep, more on that in a minute) and so they both shower with her, queue weird mutual masturbation scene that made me even more uncomfortable and I, as a woman, found disrespectful. And then queue something I like to call “delegated snuggling” which consisted in Saint cuddling with Poe (activity he needs to do bare naked because reasons) while Auden goes be the big man and check on the chapel. While he’s out? You guessed it! Saint and Poe do the devil’s tango (I’m running out of synonyms) and Auden comes back in time to catch them and decide he will stay away and go to Dom school where Rebecca (now Delphine’s Dom) is going to be the head teacher.
Morning after, Saint goes to the chapel and calls Poe there because he found what seem to be her mother’s body buried there *insert dramatic crying and written “cut to black”* which concludes this masterpiece of a book and leaves us with every. single. one. of the questions we went in with