This has the same downfalls as Twilight. Lackluster writing and worldbuilding. Horrible, abusive male protagonist. A romance that is not deserving. I think if I read this when it came out, I may have liked it; I would have been in the demographic for it. However, now that I am out of that demographic and have considerable reading experience, the faults of this work are glaringly obvious.

There are obvious pacing issues. At times, I wondered ‘what is the point of all this’? The writing did not do justice to this story at all. This was a very tell-not-show story and that’s disappointing because I recently read a work by Armentrout that I enjoyed. Her writing has definitely gotten better over the years. I think the foremost problem is that most of the action is simply described. Things are being done TO the protagonist in a very one dimensional, expository way. We have scenes that could have had great emotional impact but the writing failed to deliver; I felt no connection to what was happening or these characters.

AND DAEMON. Lord save me from men who think their existence makes them above you. He’s really just an asshole for no reason. Bullying is not cute! Even when it’s clear the author wants us to like him now, he still goes into bouts of being an absolute gremlin. Acting possessive is not going to fly, ESPECIALLY when he doesn’t even want to claim you!

I was going to give this 2 stars because there are moments I did like, but writing down my thoughts made me realize this is probably closer to a 1/1.5