RANT REVIEW AHEAD WITH SPOILERS


Ok this book was...yikes...


I was truly enjoying this book for the first, I don't know, 150, 200 pages? But after the main characters slept together, this book went tremendously downhill. Our "hero" is an abusive, manipulative, ass who literally cares 0 about our heroine. Not saying Miranda is a saint either, in fact, if I were putting it lightly, she's stupid. If I'm being blunt (which I am), she's a dumb bitch.


Turner, our hero, hears our heroine Miranda say I love you at least 4 times throughout the book, but decides that he does not love her, until she almost dies in childbirth (he explained it differently, but I wasn't fooled.) He also claims he will marry Miranda after he sleeps with her, because he knew if he didn't, she would be ruined by society. And you probably think, aww, right? So caring and sweet. LMAO, WRONG! My guy leaves her because he says he needs to "think", which is fine, ok, understandable, but he leaves for almost 2 MONTHS, because he doesn't want to marry her. He then only goes back to her, because she's pregnant with his child. Then she loses the baby, and mind you, my dude doesn't even care an ounce that his child is dead. And he demands that she has to marry him, or else he'll ruin her, by telling everyone they slept together before marriage. He also threatens her, numerous times throughout the book, and doesn't realize, like I said, that he's in love with her till she almost dies. Turner also, forces himself on Miranda more than once, continues to feel her up even as she explicitly states NO, which, if someone says NO IT MEANS, NO. I don't care if this is written in the regency time period, it was written in 2007, and consent was a legal thing in 2007. Everything about Turner is a RED FLAG. He's abusive, he drinks so much that he forces himself onto women and doesn't realize he's doing it, he's manipulative, and arrogant beyond belief (and usually we all swoon over this, because the male hero "changes''. Yeah that didn't happen) He's so romantic *rolls eyes*


Ok, I'm not saying that Miranda is entirely innocent because really, she's just plain...dumb. She's been in love with Turner since she was 10 (we see why in the prologue), which is cute I guess. But she's just stupid. She expects Turner to love her, when he doesn't even know her feelings. And then when he does, he gives 0, nada, no shits about her feelings, like at all. And she mopes and cries, and whines because he doesn't love her, and sobs about it in her stupid diary, and pities herself. And yet, SHE KEEPS GOING BACK TO HIM!!!??? She is so immacuatley dumb, I just can't even fathom it. He obviously doesn't love you, and if it takes him so much as you almost dying for him to realize it, I don't think he's worth keeping around.


Overall, this book was a mess. The main characters were SOOOO annoying, and the side characters weren't any better. Olivia was ok, but she never considered Miranda's feelings at all. I mean the girl keeps trying to force her other brother on Miranda, and demands that she marry him, so they can officially be sisters. God. I will still continue on with the next book, because it sounds funny, and maybe try to read The Duke, and I, but as of now, I have very low hopes for Julia Quinn as an author.

I have decided to remove my review because of what this man has done. It has just now come to my attention, even though this information has been out for a few years, and this man genuinely disgusts me. I can’t support this man, and if you support him, you can unfollow/unfriend me immediately. Fuck James Dashner,

*3.75

This little novella was pretty entertaining, I really wish it was a full length novel. I would have probably rated this higher, if it was a full length novel. But this was fun, and really sweet, and I really liked this. Doesn’t exactly feel like the regency era (which is what I think this was set in), but I still thought this was enjoyable.

*2.5


On the contrary to what many people have said, this book isn't garbage. I mean, don't misread that statement there, because by NO means is this but 'golden literature', but, it was surprisingly, not terrible?


Basically our story starts with a girl called Lucinda or Luce, who is accused of accidentally killing her classmate, and she's sent to a reform boarding school in New Hampshire. Luce finds that she doesn't really fit in with this school, and she's been deemed as crazy by doctors, mainly because she sees 'shadows' and has weird dreams of what she thinks is the past. She is scared to reveal her past, until she meets Daniel. Except, Daniel hates her, right off the bat.


This book is probably the best, 'Twilight knock-off' I've ever read, and that's saying something. I love Twilight dearly, even if it is pretty trashy, and when I was younger, I read a bunch of paranormal romances pitched as 'like Twilight'. I never read this one, but it wasn't bad.


The writing was good, I think that this is probably some of the best writing I've ever read in a paranormal romance. The characters actually have hobbies, and activities that they enjoy, instead of...each other, and the plot was solid.


I just had a few problems. One of them being, the book is just really slow. The plot drags, and drags, and drags, and nothing really happens until the last 100-150 pages. Its all just kind of, Luce lusting off Daniel, and being creepy. Which, brings me to my next points. Luce, is well, creepy. She basically stalks Daniel the whole entire book because she's curious about him? I mean I guess that's pretty typical, 'early 2000s, YA paranormal romance' but it was really weird. And the insta-love is pretty bad. The author tried to play this off because "oh they've been in love forever, in each life" which, yeah I guess, but we don't really see there past lives together, unless were talking about Luce's dreams, Daniels explanations, or the prologue, so it doesn't really work if that makes sense.


But again, this book is a decent (or at least what you'd call decent in the sense of 'early 2000s YA, paranormal romance'), and not nearly as bad as a lot of my friends on Goodreads proclaim it to be.

DNF @ 61%


I think its time for me to call it quits with this one. Oh, how much I wanted to love this book. I remember Heathur from Aphroditereads (that's her channel right?) talk about this book a longgggg time ago on her channel, and I knew I had to read it at some point.


I'm sad to say I was just, bored. I didn't care about the characters, and the romances were mediocre at best. The only thing keeping me reading was the Greek Mytholgy woved into this, with the 40s timeline. But even that went downhill for me.


It's really sad for me to DNF this book, because I should love this book. I love Greek Mytholgy, I love historical fiction, I love books about music, I love connected timelines and characters, and I love romance. But I just sadly, didn't like this ):

Wow, this was surprisingly good. A lot of booktubers I like have said some pretty harsh criticism about this book, and I’ve definitely tried to steer clear of this. But, I’m glad I didn’t, because this was really good.


I don’t really know why I trusted what these booktubers said. I really enjoyed [b: Daughter of a Pirate King|41841566|Daughter of the Pirate King - A kalózkirály lánya (Daughter of the Pirate King, #1)|Tricia Levenseller|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1537088932l/41841566._SX50_.jpg|46636002] and I loved [b: The Shadows Between Us|35702241|The Shadows Between Us|Tricia Levenseller|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558027905l/35702241._SY75_.jpg|57195957]. (I still need to read Daughter of a Siren Queen but

This book was really unique and interesting. The world was really cool, and it reminded me a lot of the ruthless world of the Exploration Age in history. The problem's I had varied from weak characters, weird small plot holes, and the romance.


The side characters in here had little page personality, and it felt like some characters came into the plot, only for convenience, or villainy. I finished the book 20 minutes ago, and I don't remember the male side characters names. You know why? Because we didn't hardly see them at all.


There were also really weird plot holes in here too. It stated (at least I'm 90% sure) that Fable was 14 when she was dropped off on the small island, but in the flashbacks she acted like a small child. She also always called herself a "little girl", or "I'm not that same little girl anymore". You know, basically what people say when they're being dramatic about the past. It felt weird, and well, what it was. A plot hole. There was also this weird plot hole with Fable's dad. Not going to go to much into that, because ✨spoilers✨, but it was such an odd plot hole to miss.


And the romance, I don't think I like it. The whole relationships that Fable formed in fact, I didn't really like. The people on the Marigold hated Fable from the moment she set her feet on the ship. Then it was like a switch was flipped and POOF everyone likes her now. This was the problem, really with West (the love interest). He is kind of a douche if I'm putting it lightly. And the romance felt really forced between them, I didn't like it. In other words, Fable had 0 chemistry with any of these characters, and her West had negative chemistry. They just didn’t fit together. And maybe they could have, but we didn’t see them together enough for me to root for them. We didn’t see the development in their relationship, so I didn’t really feel anything towards it except repulse.


But the ending, the ending was the most interesting part of this book. See, the ending intrigued me, and I'm definitely going to pick up the sequel. Was pretty disappointed by this book though, especially since everyone has been raving about it for the last few months here.

I mean, ehh. That’s really all I have to say. I was just cringing a lot during this, and a lot of my thought process was “why did you do that?” Or “why did you say that?”.


Griffin was low key creepy, and Luca and Griffin’s relationship was a bit unhealthy. The smut was ok at best, and relationship between Griffin and Luca was borderline, instalove. Also, why did they photoshop a pen into the guys hand on the cover wtf?

I’m gonna DNF this for now because I can’t seem to get into it

*4.5


How come this book has a lower rating than book 1? This book is WAYYY better than book 1. Ashbury and Emma's characters were the epitome of stupid. But Alex and Chase. The definition of perfection. Rosamund and Daisy = my ❤️