A review by lindsinmco
Kiss of the Basilisk by Lindsay Straube

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.5

Maybe this is for someone, but it’s absolutely not me.  This is a contender for worst book I’ve ever read and it’s my first 1 star of 2025.  I almost DNF’d multiple times, but powered through simply so I could share a complete opinion.  This reads like a sexual awakening moment triggered by Chamber of Secrets and then turned into a kinky fetish novel that somehow got popular on social media.  The “plot” is repetitive, off-the-rails nonsense that only serves to link one sex scene to another.  Whatever booktok account sold this to me as romantasy, was wrong.  This is certainly not fantasy, romance, or romantasy!  The FMC is insufferably irritating, whiny and confoundingly dumb.    How either of the male characters find her so desirable is highly questionable.  I enjoy a why choose trope, but this is packed with banana-crackers kinks in the name of “plot” and they don’t land with what I assume the intended impacts were.  For example, the FMC must sleep with MMC’s dad in front of the entire community in order to prove herself and gets her pelvis shattered during sex, but loves it and keeps going for more immediately.  The spice is there for shock value, it’s not arousing or enjoyable and worse, it’s not actually integral to the development of the characters relationships.  The MMC’s lack any meaningful personality and are boiled down only to their desire for the FMC.  The author seems to think that world-building means describing the main characters surroundings during sex.  The relationships are toxic and abusive.  Dialog is so clunky and juvenile it pulls you out of the genuinely insane plot to contemplate if an editor ever looked at this.  This book is also about 350 pages too long.  Someone please explain why this is getting a sequel!!??