A review by gloriamontagov
Falls Boys by Penelope Douglas

3.5

 ➥ 3.5 Stars *:･ﾟ✧

"You like me?" She bites my ear so soft, chills crawl my arms.

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Although I don’t deny that this book is evidence of PD’s growth as an author, I ultimately think they should have let go of their past works and started with something new, and standalone.

To start on a positive note, I’ve grown fonder and fonder of PD’s FMCs every time they publish a new book. Aro (h) was a powerful, hard-working, hot FMC with agency and substance. She even reminded me of Olivia, who we all know I love dearly as well. It’s incredibly refreshing to see more of these types of female characters, especially in dark romance, as women tend to be written as meek and plain, but I’m glad to see PD has left characters like Tate, Fallon, Juliet, Rika and Banks behind, and is instead putting forward female characters like Aro, Olivia, Clay and Tiernan.

Of course, as a Latina woman, I was intrigued when I realised Aro would be a Latina character. Though, unfortunately, I wasn’t enamoured with PD’s representation. It’s not something they did particularly terribly, and it’s actually a trap that most media with Latina characters fall into, but Aro only spoke Spanish to swear. Instead, what would have been more realistic, was to also include her using Spanish filler words or saying a sentence in half Spanish half English. More significantly though, I didn’t love the stereotypical depiction of Aro, in the sense that she’s a Latina with a large family, has absent parents, deals drugs and runs away from gangs. Sound familiar? It’s something I can look past, I’m not too bothered about it, but I wasn’t really impressed by the aspect.

Still though, I did feel that her personality shone, and her attractiveness is (in my opinion) irresistible.

Pressing her body into mine, her scent hits me, and liquid heat rushes through my veins as her mouth hovers over mine.
She reaches behind me, and I hear the bobby pin slip into the lock of my cuffs. I brush her nose with mine.
"I've been detained before," she whispers as everyone in the room watched. "A few times..."
She moves the bobby pin around, taking my bottom lip between her teeth. "It's actually not that hard once you get the hang of it," she teases.
I nod. "So, what you're saying is handcuffs won't work on you." (🙄🤢)
She smiles. "Maybe duct tape."
I graze my lips over her forehead, brushing her hair with my mouth and dying to have her in my arms. "I love you," I say.
"I know, baby."

Personally, I know a character is pretty great when I actually like when they use the endearment "baby".

I was also impressed with the more unique route the PD took with the dynamic. Not only did they write a fantastic female main character, but the badgirl/goodboy dynamic in dark romance is rarely explored, and I really appreciated the way in which PD stepped out of the comfort zone they tends to write in, and tried something new and interesting. I hadn't anticipated that PD would execute a somewhat friends-to-lovers premise, while still keeping it in their notorious dark, smutty romance subgenre. Especially since PD's specialty has been bully romances in the past.

"Baby." She kisses my mouth, its corners, my jaw... "Where else does it hurt?" she asks.

However, I feel Hawke (H) could have been even more "goodboy"-ish. I felt that at the beginning, his goodboy character was really working. He wasn't overly arrogant, and I also liked the uniqueness of having a virgin hero, but once he lost his virginity, he was as annoying, arrogant and controlling as ever. I think maybe PD slipped into their usual style there, but it didn't work for me, since here, he was trying to be dominant toward a strong fmc, even calling women "females", and being Aro's saviour often, when I really just wanted Aro to keep being the powerful one in their dynamic. At the end, it's supposedly revealed to us that (view spoiler) but I didn't like it at all. It's as though he was just copying one of Aro's traits that we already love, hoping that we'd love him too. Not only did he do it wrong, (view spoiler) but he even cockily declared that (view spoiler) Then, he also admitted to knowing shit about (view spoiler), which was also Aro's thing, and then even tried to incorporate it into a sex scene, which I didn't find attractive.

In terms of generally romantic interactions, I felt they were exceptionally done, in typical PD fashion. There was a moment where (view spoiler) and it was such a tender yet tension-filled moment. Really really well-done. But, what disappointed me was the infrequency of these great moments.

Which leads me to say that the plot was absolutely terrible in my eyes, sadly. I believe this is a side effect of PD writing series again, and I think it's one of the main factors that make their series not work for me. I knew that there would be a danger of PD slipping into their past tendencies by writing a companion series to the Fall Away series, but I actually felt that there were many more similarities with Devil's Night...which is even worse. Grudge night is similar to Devil's night, and the whole territory thing reminded me of the way it was in Tryst Six Venom (which had been done unsuccessfully there too, in my opinion).

In writing a series, I saw that PD spent so much time building up a plot that the rest of the series could hang off of, that it greatly took away from the romance. The urban legends were strange and I don't actually understand the hideaway thing. There was even a strange sex scene where it seemed like Aro and Hawke were re-enacting one of the myths? Very weird.

The density of this attempt at shoving in plot resulted in a formatting where there was one romantic moment, then 50 pages of side-plot and drama, then another romantic moment, then 100 pages of side-plot and drama, then what felt like one last romantic moment where the characters are suddenly in love, and then in the last part, PD always shoves in a large chunk of plot and theatrics in the last 20%. This last part happened in Tryst Six Venom too.

So, even though both the book and the individual chapters felt far too long and drawn out, I actually didn't get enough moments of Aro and Hawke alone, having their moments of romantic development. When it got to where they said I love you, I didn't feel like there had been enough to build it up to that.

Something that was even more uncharacteristic for PD, was that the first sex scene was at 70%. Which of course I wouldn't mind too much if there were other romantic moments along the way, but because it was plot-dense and lacking romantic encounters, it felt like I was never going to get to the payoff. And really, I think that PD is so good at writing dialogue, description and length in sex scenes, it's a shame that they included so few. For example, I really liked how it was done in Tryst Six Venom where the characters hadn't yet formed emotional/romantic connections with the other, but the sex scenes actually contributed to their growing affection. Olivia and Clay had sex while they still hated eachother. I think that could have worked here too.

"Look at me." She tugs my bottom lip through her teeth. "Open your jeans."

On another note, there was some OW drama, and though it sometimes lended to some angsty moments of Aro being jealous, it became something annoying because of how often it was brought up, and it was ultimately added to the list of things that took away from Aro and Hawke's actual growing relationship.

In terms of how this book compares to the Fall Away series, I admit that it's far, far better, in many obvious senses, but, I really do think PD should stick to standalones and cut ties with their older work. I was not happy to revisit the Fall Away couples, that are now parents. One of the male ones, I forget which one, didn't let his daughter wear a tank top it made him uncomfortable - sexualising your own daughter is crazy. Did you refuse to change her diaper too? I also didn't like Kade - a character that reminded me of Jared with the usual brooding, angry-boy persona that is supposedly 'misunderstood' but is actually just annoying, emotionally stunted and uncaring of others.

I have noticed though, that PD has been republishing some of their older work with Berkley, so hopefully that'll give them easier access to things like editors etc, that could definitely fix issues like the representation, length and balance of plot/romance/pacing.

Phew, that was a lot for me to get off my chest, but I can now say I'm satisfied with my review. I think, to be fair, that this is a good book for people who are trying dark romance, since it's not super smutty or super dark, but lingers a little on those aspects.

PD's instagram says they're working on Pirate Girls, the second book in the series, which hurts a little because I was anxiously anticipating Motel. Also, I do think it's a waste for PD to make all the books in the Hellbent series straight, when they could have easily made one or two of them sapphic or gay. Oh well! If you've made it down here, thank you for listening to all I have to say. *Blows kisses to Aro*.

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