discarded_dust_jacket's reviews
310 reviews

If I had to guess, I’d say that is the thesis of this novel. At least, I can see how it tried to be.

These characters felt absurdly disembodied. For instance, I can’t recall if the MC’s appearance was ever explicitly described. I had no idea what she looked like, aside from being “above-average pretty.” 

Even the sexual intimacy felt detached from the characters’ bodies somehow. There is (allegedly) a frantic, desperate lust undergirding each rendezvous, but I wasn’t actually sensing any of that in the text, just told it was there. It all read as very… dry, almost clinical. No sensory details to ground the scene in the tangible world. Just some quick staging.

Also there was no character depth. Nothing made me want to care about these people. There’s such minimal exposition; it just begins and then it’s PLOT PLOT PLOT, and we’re expected to be instantly invested without really knowing who they are or why we should care.

Additionally, there are no real meaningful side characters, no friends (the other contestants occasionally have moments of depth, but they’re brief), the MC’s family get like, one and a half scenes on-page. It’s just so… sparse and soulless.

Lastly, the romance is bizarre and unbelievable. During their first conversation they’re already speaking to one another as if  they have some deep bond, but then every conversation after is manipulative and combative and I kept wondering “wait so do they actually like one another?” 

I understand what the author was trying to do, I think, but it just wasn’t executed successfully at all.

Absolutely wrong with it! This book is beautifully-written! I just got distracted by all the other books I was reading and the library loan expired, so I’ll come back to it. 🫶🏻

One thing I will say that I really appreciate about this series is that it subverts a lot of the tropes that have become ubiquitous within the monster romance sub-genre. (That was more the case with the first book—which featured a submissive MMC and a soft femdom FMC with vaginismus who wasn’t interested in penetrative sex—but the sentiment is still present here.)

Lily Mayne’s choice to make the Demiurgus biology incompatible with humans, has created a world in which other forms of sexual intimacy get explored besides p in v penetration, which I find really admirable. Monster romance, for all the things we love about it, still falls into a lot of the gender essentialist stereotypes of “big, strong man is dominant and aggressive” and “small, dainty woman is submissive and weak.” Depicting an MMC who enthusiastically enjoys wearing a strap on over a c*ck cage in order to top his partner safely, and doesn’t view it as some threat to his “manhood” is really refreshing.

The only reason I gave this book such a low rating is because of how overwritten it was. The ratio of action/dialogue to interior monologue was wildly disproportionate. The characters’ thoughts would go on these droning tangents that lasted whole pages and weren’t necessary almost 100% of the time.

Authors: if you’ve done an adequate job of establishing your characters and providing situational context, trust that your audience can often infer their thoughts and emotions, without having them spelled out in soporific detail.

Something that I think contributes to the problem is that a lot of these stories don’t include strong supporting characters—people the MCs can work through their problems with in scenes that involve action and dialogue—so what we get instead are long sequences of internal turmoil propelled by self-directed leading questions.

An example would be, say the heroine of a story has romantic feelings for a coworker but doesn’t want to jeopardize their professional relationship. Her interior monologue in this case might sound like: “These feelings are becoming a nuisance. When did I start noticing how well his shirts fit his broad shoulders? Has his mouth always formed that single, adorable dimple when he smirks? It doesn’t matter; nothing can happen between us. But why not? What’s the worst that could come of it? Oh, you know, just the possibility that we could lose our jobs. No big deal. Or things could end badly and then working together would be tense and awkward. Would it really be so bad if we gave it a shot?” and on and on.

Now, in this story, Nuni did have Laki, who he called whenever he was working through something, but for some reason, even after those conversations, the reader would be subjected to additional, redundant interior monologue afterwards. At some point, I just started skimming.

I know that the beginning of P&P is meant to lean into the characters’ flaws, but I found both protagonists to be deeply unlikeable and it made it hard to want to watch them fall in love.

I also thought it was overwritten. For every piece of dialogue or action, it felt like there was a disproportionate amount of internal exposition, which made it feel like a chore to push through.

And lastly, I wasn’t comfortable with this story involving the manipulation or coercion of a terminally ill person into undergoing treatment they are unwilling to, even if it means saving their life. When Trisha remarks to her boss that since her patients didn’t go through medical school like her, they aren’t properly equipped to make decisions about their own treatment, it made me viscerally angry. And maybe her gross opinions about her patients’ bodily autonomy are meant to be something that change as the story progresses—like maybe that’s how she grows as a character—but it still didn’t sit right with me, and I didn’t want to continue.

Well… I’m sobbing.

I really loved this narrator, but there were some things about the production of the audiobook that could use tweaking. 

Other than that this was phenomenal. Good grief, the found family was top tier. My heart ached for these characters.

This book left the same sort of impression on me as a lot of contemporary romances, which is I close the book and go “that was cute,” and then promptly move on. 

The premise was interesting (although, my physics major husband was quick to ruin the science behind Jack’s NASA mission when I tried to explain it to him), and the characters were charming. There was nothing necessarily wrong with it—in fact I read it really quickly, so something obviously kept me turning the page.

It didn’t inspire the impulse to giggle or kick my feet or anything, which makes me think the problem might’ve been that I didn’t feel much chemistry between the main characters. I don’t know.

But overall, it was fine! Very cute.

It’s not that I’ve stopped reading it, but my library loan is running out and I think I’d like to own this book so I can read it slowly, one chapter at a time, or when the situation calls for it. 

This doesn’t feel like the type of book you sit and read all at once. This is a book that asks you to really meditate on each section. So I’m going to continue reading it once I purchase my own copy, but just, not at a pace that’s neatly “trackable,” if that makes sense.