1.5 stars. Half a star because the first half of this book was actually enjoyable
Warning: This review is DISGUSTINGLY long
Okay so let's just start with the beginning. I went into this book relatively blind (yes I checked the tw's) and it started out as surprisingly enjoyable. I was like wow, the plot is actually really good and although the pacing and writing style is a bit jumpy, I actually really enjoyed the pacing as well! This book started out as a story about Witch trials, religious trauma, mass hysteria, misogyny, and I was like omg hell yeah this is actually really good! I was enjoying pretty much everything and I really liked the fmc and how brave and admirable she was, and with a monster romance to come?? I was excited.
But then at the halfway point, the monster did come, and this book instantly went downhill from there. What was supposed to be a romance was instead an insta lust, almost insta sex, mostly dub-con book. Because genuinely, they almost instantly have sex. There is no romance, no chemistry, just almost instant sex where the horseman sees her and and instantly wants her to ride him, which the fmc doesn't want to have said sex but again, dub-con, and the rest of the book is filled with what I think was some of the most cringeworthy and gross sex scenes and lines I've ever had the displeasure of reading, and this book became my own personal suffering. I'm going to share some quotes bellow of exactly what I mean as well as the context of some of them:
"Six chances to shed blood and flex my killing muscles." Where The Horseman has just been summoned (but of course not before fucking the fmc first) and he wants to impress her by jeff the killing 6 bad men and of course, had to flex his "killing muscles".
"Blood pounds through my body, hot and loose, settling in my fully erect cock" when one of the main antagonists of the book gets hard from killing people it's fucked up, but when the horseman does it it's hot cause it's bad guys.
"Look at you, gone soft for a golden-haired creature with a magical voice and even more magical cunt" -_-
"Revenge served with a side of clenching cunt and thrusting cock. Yes, this is what I want." At this point I was genuinely starting to hate this book.
"She owes me this and every other depraved act I ask of her" The fmc fucks up a spell to give him a body by accidentally making him a pumpkin man and he sees fit to "punish" her and force her to do any sexual act he wants her to do.
"I'm down bad for my nightingale." Yeah, this line doesn't exactly mesh with the "where hast thou gone?" type verbiage of this book that this author tries to implement and then just gives up on halfway through.
"We've not even made it to the woods when I slide the first vine inside of her." After rescuing the whole town, and finally defeating the demon who was terrorising them, the horseman immediately goes to fuck the fmc on his horse.
"completely unaware that my cock is pushing more of her ex fiancé's blood into her over stuffed cunt with every thrust" That's just fucked
"Emeline laughs, causing her stomach to contract. Seeds squirt from her sated pussy." What the fuck?
""I know you didn't just spit your cum on my dead fiancé's grave," I deadpan."" As he makes them have sex over her ex's grave the coffin breaks and he spits cum onto his corpse. But don't worry, she doesn't care and just let's him continue. Ignoring the fact.
These were just SOME of the lines that had me cringing and/or disgusted. I'm fine with smut, I've read sex scenes in books before, but if you're gonna write a so called "romance" where half the book is sex scenes, at least make them fucking good. Instead, most of the time I was just sat there, cringing and disappointed because some of them had potential, but the execution was always terrible. And before I summarise, there is something that I genuinely need to rant about with this book. This novella sets up not only a really good plot, but some really fucking good antagonists, and then gives us nothing.
No proper revenge, no satisfaction, because any scene of any of the villains actually getting killed is fucking ruined with internal dialogue from the horseman about how horny he is from killing and about how sick and twisted he is 😈. Leed, the man who in my opinion is the leading and worst antagonist, is killed while the horseman and the fmc are fucking, she doesn't know he's even just killed someone because she's so horny, and then he just drags the corpse and head away with his vines (he has vine powers after he gets turned into a pumpkin man) because 'she's expirienced enough stress, I don't want her to go through more.' So neither Emeline (the fmc), or we as the audience are satisfied with any sort of revenge, or any sort of death on the side of the antagonists. Because any form of justice is convoluted and fucking ruined with sex and dicks getting hard for murder. And it fucking pisses me off to have set up such convincing antagonists, where you think AT THE VERY LEAST the author can give us some satisfying deaths.
But no. None of the deaths are satisfying and no justice for all of the terrible shit the antagonists do feels satisfying in the slightest. I have never read a dark romance before, and I knew I didn't like the genre based off of the descriptions that everyone makes off of the books in this genre. But I wanted to give it a chance, especially with all the dark romance fans that have tried to peer pressure me to "just try it out, you might enjoy it more than you think", and I wanted some actual romance. But this book literally fucking confirms every single assumption I have ever had about dark romance.
The sex scenes were fucking terrible, the mmc is an abusive asshole, the fmc starts out strong and has actual character, then turns into this weak vessel for the mmc to use and abuse for sex whenever he wants (but not whenever she wants because she has to do whatever he says), and I fucking hated it. This book started out as an intriguing, interesting story about a woman and her battle against corrupt men, mysoginist hysteria, and corrupt magic, and then turns into garbage where some Jackolantern cums pumpkin seeds and makes the fmc ride the pumpkin stem at the top of his pumpkin head. This novella represents everything I fucking hate with modern day literature, with modern day romance, dark romance, what have you, and confirmed every suspicion and assumption I had about this genre and by the end I fucking hated it. This went from a potential 4 star read to a 1.5, and I'm glad to be done with it and that my suffering AT LEAST paid off towards my reading goal. FUCK FIERO or whatever the fuck his name was, and the best character was the cat. Have a nice day everybody ✌🏼