bibilly's Reviews (336)

marriage of convenience should be aggravating but sexy. this is only aggravating.

the mc in this one can't be compared to his big puppy of a brother from the first book. it was damn annoying seeing him acting like an oblivious child. his behavior made the story even more unrealistic and prevented me from taking the romance seriously. worse: the characters' interactions were so ridiculous they kinda diminished my satisfaction with the previous title :/

this kinda slaps? the characters' backstories and side relations don't make a strong case, there's no real glimpse of their life on campus or outside an apartment and the way they meet is quite questionable, but i still had a blast? even with these flaws, the book managed to be an example of how every romance author should write imo: ignoring the external bullshit they clearly don't know how to develop without making the story boring, focusing on the couple's interactions and, most importantly, not resorting to miscommunication to create or prolong conflict. now im in love with the name Logan.

an age gap featuring a ballet dancer shouldn't be this boring, and im not feeling the connection the characters swear they have (their insta love/attraction seems forced to me).

this could and should've been gay(er). the girl simply appeared and ruined the whole enemies-to-friends-to-lovers build-up. and for what? tragedy with a miraculous ending? we could've had that without her too.

dnf @ 27%

i thought myself in the mood for mary oliver's obsession with nature, but i guess i underestimated the size of this collection. the woman didn't care about form whatsoever, making her platitudes completely unimpressive, except for some verses here and there. someone said most of her poems are just diary entries with line breaks, and that pretty much sums it up. 

a ya book done right. except when it's not. at first, my biggest issue was with the friendship that sets up the whole conflict happening too fast. the reader was supposed to see in the mc a smart girl who didn't trust easily and wouldn't go doing dumb shit bc of someone she's just met, but the number of impulsive actions only increased along the way. that made Vivvie, the friend (of color) in question, seem more like an excuse than a character. 

secondlly came the reminder that im not a fan of mystery or who-did-it books and only picked this up for the drama and the rags-to-riches trope. so despite the comparison with Scandal and Veronica Mars being surprisingly on point, i was waiting for more political stuff connecting the students of the fancy school. i wanted to see the transformation of a ranch girl into a queen bee, who cares for the hive but thrives in the power.

i am, however, a fan of cold-but-caring characters, and we get a bunch of those here. Tess, the protagonist, is kinda like Katniss Everdeen in Washington DC, if Katniss were the younger sister. instead of Peeta, we get Henry, to whom everything is a serious matter, and his bestie, Asher, to whom everything could be turned into a good joke, except when those he cares about (that is, Henry) are involved. together they make a trio that we can dare to wish will not become a love triangle in the next book, bc there's no romance in this one. 

unfortunately, even though im rooting for Henry, upon finishing it i decided not to read The Long Game. because, in the end, my biggest complaint was how underwhelming the plot twists were — the ones i predicted and the ones i didn't —, probably due to my lack of real connection to the characters. idk, maybe im dead inside, but in all those life or death situations i should've cared more, and i didn't. also, some reviews hint at an open ending to the duology, and i don't have the time to find out if that's true and get all frustrated about it.

much like stories about monarchies and rich families in general, concept-wise, mafia romances have everything I like: that irresistible mix of ambition and tradition, power and danger, drama and intrigue. the problem is that none of them seem to know what subtlety or yearning is. always too much bragging and not enough action, a lot of telling-not-showing. ok, so you torture men for a living, but what makes you different from the rest? your Cambridge degree as a rich white boy? your otherworldly beauty that has to be stated by a whole paragraph as soon as the female mc lays eyes on you? you have to give me something real, otherwise it's fucking boring. and it has to be substantial, not empty words repeated again and again.

I can't say When Heroes Fall didn't try: a traumatized icy queen of a lawyer and a big man full of candor that doesn't take any bullshit do set a nice stage if you're into romance at all. on top of that, I related to some of the heroine's insecurities; and her intense desire to conceive a child didn't make me close the book right away, which definitely says something.

however, our icy queen's worldview was too naive for a 27-year-old lawyer in New York that had run away from the Italian mafia and her narcissistic dad. her backstory wasn't convincing, probably bc it relies on other books by the author. also, despite my lust for tv shows about lawyers (I've almost finished watching The Partner Track on Netflix just bc it had lawyers and after that I binge-watched The Recruit for finding Noah Centineo's character weirdly compelling, and if that doesn't prove I'm not THAT picky I don't know what does), this plotline along with the reason for the mighty capo being charged for murder was uninteresting and sometimes even hard for me to follow.

my biggest problem with the hero was that his dark underworld didn't amaze me one bit: even his name - Dante Salvatore - sounded borderline ridiculous and all his men and enemies felt more like name tags than characters. as for the romance, it was too instalovey for this setting and premise. I was more turned on by the possibility of Elena claiming her spot next to Dante and becoming a mafia boss herself than the smut, but we don't get to see said culmination in this book, so I felt like I finished reading it for nothing.

bottom line? the cover has more personality than the actual book (a problem shared with Welcome to the Dark Side, a title by this author I've dnf'ed).