I'm hoping Ms. Huntington had a major influence in the writing of this book or I'm going to go nuts. I have not been satisfied with the last few books that Ms. Shen has released, most have been very bleh and generic. They are far from her original books like "Sparrow" and "Viscous". I have high hopes for this book, so I guess we will see. Btw love the Amazon paperback cover, very old fashioned bodice ripper vibes.
3/13/2023 update:
DNF 23%. Y'all I'm mad bc this book is being mis-marketed. First of all, this is not a slow-burn enemies to lovers romance nor is it a dark romance as advertised. I would say this is more so if Adam Sandler tried to write a romance book. Which I mean would totally be fine if that is what it was advertised as! Then I wouldn't have spent my hard earned money on it and wouldn't have read it, since rom-com's with gross-out humor are not my thing! However, this was being advertised as some dark, tragic, Beauty and the Beast-esque type romance, which it was not!
The FMC and MMC are immature and dumb and so are their families. I just couldn't with these two. They and their families acted like it was the year 1955. Oh man, Romeo had his hand down your panties at the debutant ball (happens 5% in)? I guess you have to marry the dude or we will be sent to social jail and lose all of our money and standing in society. Oh the horror?! I really didn't get it, Dallas doesn't even try to say or do anything about it, she just falls asleep watching Cheaters when he comes to take her away from her family. She doesn't even cry at not being able to say goodbye to said family! She was too busy watching Cheaters and falling asleep.
Don't even get me started on Romeo, he was Shen's standard "alphahole mega douche canoe". Also can we get rid of the word "alphahole"? It makes me cringe with a vengeance, I think it may be the most millennial thing out there besides the side-part and the phrase "yolo". When some one calls another person an alphahole, it doesn't sound sexy, it sounds like butt hole (to each their own). Romeo was pretty much a discount Killian from Shen's "The Villain". Big, hunky, businessman who hates everything cute or anything consider feminine/female. They both have father's who give them the marriage ultimatums and have a no p@ssy pact bc someone from their past cheated on them or hurt them in some way. They both have jobs at companies that are bad for society in some way, Killain runs a major oil company and Romeo is CFO of an military/arms dealing company. "The Villain" was marketed as HadesxPersephone while this book was marketed as BeautyxBeast. Ngl I'm tired of Shen recycling plots at this point.
I could go on and on about this book, but I will spare who's ever reading this (if you have gotten this far). If you want to read something like this, but better go read Huntington's "Darling Venom" or "Devious Lies". If you like Shen more go read "The Kiss Thief" which is this, but done better. Oh yeah "The Kiss Thief" is if Romeo was more heartless and didn't have friends and actually carried out a decent revenge plot.
Side-note: I can't believe Huntington wrote any of this, her stories are a lot more detailed and have actual likeable characters that aren't caricatures of people. I know people think Huntington and Shen are possibly the same person, but they can't be based off the way they write their characters. Huntington's characters have depth and Shen's ( as of late) do not. I've shed tears over some of the scenes in Huntington's stories, and I have not ever done that with one of Shen's.
The other thing that left a bad taste in my mouth is that it seems like Shen's works are geared towards making her stories money mills. Like give the MMC a few friends and make them vaguely interesting enough to the point where they can have their own books and people will come back for more. It just seems like Shen is interested mostly in money than creating meaningful or impactful stories. I don't mind waiting 2 years for a Huntington book, if it's actually good. I don't know what this was, but I would advise against doing another team up like this in the future unless Huntington is more involved in the writing process.