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A review by kaulhilo
The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian
2.0
this book was theoretically so fun, and so good. the premise is very interesting, what with all the robinhood mmc and blackmailer x murderer romance, and a million other things that set up to a novel that apparently can’t fail. reading this, however, was a complete antithesis, and ended up being one of the more dull books i’ve ever pushed myself to go through.
all of that falls entirely on the characterization to me; this is a book based 100% on ideals- in the plot, in how the characters behave, in how they interact. it’s as if someone took the whole concept of insta perfectionism and jammed it full in every character they could. that’s not necessarily a bad thing - it just makes for very unrealistic, and therefore utterly unrelatable, characters. it gets tiring, because none of them felt real. i need flaws, i need growth, i need character arcs; all of which becomes impossible the second you par your characters with perfect and refuse to let them age.
the writing alternatively, was donemostly so well, if a bit cliché and derivative; you could tell which lines (and there were many) picked out almost directly from viral twitter/tumblr quotes, and that really brought down the book somewhat for me.
all of that aside, i do appreciate the concept of this so much, especially since it’s as untapped as it is. i picked it up in the first place thanks to that, and while it was a mostly disappointing read, i’m glad to have read it anyway.
*this review is based on the arc.
all of that falls entirely on the characterization to me; this is a book based 100% on ideals- in the plot, in how the characters behave, in how they interact. it’s as if someone took the whole concept of insta perfectionism and jammed it full in every character they could. that’s not necessarily a bad thing - it just makes for very unrealistic, and therefore utterly unrelatable, characters. it gets tiring, because none of them felt real. i need flaws, i need growth, i need character arcs; all of which becomes impossible the second you par your characters with perfect and refuse to let them age.
the writing alternatively, was done
all of that aside, i do appreciate the concept of this so much, especially since it’s as untapped as it is. i picked it up in the first place thanks to that, and while it was a mostly disappointing read, i’m glad to have read it anyway.
*this review is based on the arc.