A review by alvalovesbooks
The Darkening by Sunya Mara

adventurous challenging dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

this book was so plain boring, i did not enjoy reading it at all. i had such high hopes because of the marketing on tiktok and was so disappointed. the whole book felt so rush, i felt like the main character never really got to feel emotions and everything that happened to her was just quickly brushed over. tbh in the first 200 pages absolutely nothing interesting happened and i was thinking of just dnf’ing the book, i was just way too stubborn to stop reading. after that it got a little bit better.

vesper’s relationship with dalca also was really weird. it was advertised to be enemies to lovers to enemies. never once did vesper actually only see him as only a lover, she always saw him as dangerous in the back of her head. i never even felt like she was actually in love with him, as i said before, all her emotions were just brushed over. their first kiss was also written badly and she just really quickly accepted him as her “lover”. if i would’ve had someone as an enemy for my whole life and they killed lots of people, i wouldn’t just  see them as wonderful and admit that i actually like them from one second to another. i would’ve contemplated all my life decisions but apparently that’s wrong.

i also couldn’t really connect to the characters, they weren’t fleshed out enough for me. the whole writing was absolutely nothing special and boring.

the only thing i actually liked is when they went into the storm and we got a better insight of what the characters actually feel. however i didn’t actually understand most of the things that happened while they were in there

most of the time, i also didn’t really understand what was going on, poor writing again. the whole concept of the book is so good and could’ve had such high potential but was executed badly. there were so many plot holes left at the end of the book, i was confused. the last 100 pages of the book were somehow actually acceptable. all in all, i wouldn’t recommend this book, especially not for the people who saw the marketing and thought it would be the most amazing book ever.