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A review by invaderday
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
slow-paced
2.0
really frustrated by this book's inability to care about it's own plot even a little. if you want to write a smutty romance novel you can 100% still do that in a fantasy + historical setting! but there was so little effort to engage me in the plot of this book as a reader and i didn't care enough about the main pairing for that to be enough for me.
i wanted there to be a more interesting mystery with more interesting sleuthing and there just wasn't. instead it seemed more interested in making the sex scenes plot important?? and like, they were fine. but i just found myself really annoyed about halfway through the book that it didn't seem to be going anywhere.
also i switched between a paper copy and the audiobook a few times and whole the narrator is talented he has no business reading a sex scene. i am usually fine with listening to audiobook sex scenes but oh my god that was the unsexiest voice i've ever heard reading two people actively having sex. HOWEVER at one point he tries to read a noise that robin makes mid-fuck and it is THE funniest sound i have ever heard it cracks me the fuck up every time. so one of these stars is probably for that alone.
anyway maybe im a bit too harsh bc i don't really care for historical england settings let alone posh english society so i maybe didn't go in with the most open mind. also would've maybe helped if this book was abt women and included a butch/masc woman but i also feel that would improve every book i read. and in the end, i still think i would've been disappointed by the story.
i wanted there to be a more interesting mystery with more interesting sleuthing and there just wasn't. instead it seemed more interested in making the sex scenes plot important?? and like, they were fine. but i just found myself really annoyed about halfway through the book that it didn't seem to be going anywhere.
also i switched between a paper copy and the audiobook a few times and whole the narrator is talented he has no business reading a sex scene. i am usually fine with listening to audiobook sex scenes but oh my god that was the unsexiest voice i've ever heard reading two people actively having sex. HOWEVER at one point he tries to read a noise that robin makes mid-fuck and it is THE funniest sound i have ever heard it cracks me the fuck up every time. so one of these stars is probably for that alone.
anyway maybe im a bit too harsh bc i don't really care for historical england settings let alone posh english society so i maybe didn't go in with the most open mind. also would've maybe helped if this book was abt women and included a butch/masc woman but i also feel that would improve every book i read. and in the end, i still think i would've been disappointed by the story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Sexism, Murder, and Torture