A review by hobbithopeful
Thrall by Roan Parrish, Avon Gale

Did not finish book. Stopped at 57%.
I got over halfway in this book, gave up, and skimmed over the rest of it. Very original idea, but honestly the execution left much to be desired, and I don't feel like the title is accurate to what this book is actually about.  Over 95% of this book takes place over texting/internet messaging so it is a lot of dialogue chunks with very little reading rest. It is spouted as a queer dracula retelling, however centers more on side characters. In fact this book could easily have had a different title and different character names and it would have read better. I also find it very, very, VERY problematic that so much of the books content was surrounding race and issues etc. But the authors are both white?  Like.....ehhhhh right? I don't think there were any sensitivity readers for this book at all (I feel like you can ALWAYS tell) Just the whole concept of white authors writing a book centered around so much issues that poc face just comes off as insincere. I absolutely love Roan Parrish's other book, and was so disappointed by the quality of writing in this. (Seriously y'all, I was having to push through to read as far as I did) The ending was also incredibly disapointing to me. Really everything about this book was.

In short:

Poor writing
Badly written spicy scenes
No chemistry between characters (as it all happens over texting/etc you don't feel like any of them really form a relationship) 
Terrible Ending
Nothing to do with Dracula
Problematic featuring and centering of racial issues considering the authors own race (It comes off super weird in the book too) 


If you managed to get through this book I applaud you. 
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