cw: english cuss words, description of unusual 'food'
This is a contemporary genre of a story, where it surrounds the high social class centered around Delilah and her lifestyle, as well as Ezaq, her employer, which he tried to 'run away' from such lifestyle due to his past experience, yet at the same time, he was attracted towards Delilah.
I personally have a love hate relationship with the tale. The idea and the premise itself was interesting overall, but the execution was quite a let down for me.
First foremost, I really love every single information presented onto the story, it's absolutely natural and was woven well with the plot itself. I can truly see how excellent the research done by the author to write about various topics on in depth level, from scavenger, cosmetic surgery, as well as business and marketing, every each one of them were written absolutely well and I enjoyed reading them. And the depictions and the realism of high society was so entertaining to explore too. I simply love the overall background of the story.
Moving onto the characters, I personally really do like Delilah as a character and her entire characterization. She's quite a clever and smart lady and we could really see it in her thoughts and her words. I actually admire her way of thoughts, one may seen her only as a bimbo as to how 'odd' she may look around us normies, but, everything she has done was well thought and planned by her, she knows what she wants, although some things do get out of her hands, but everytime she did took responsible over it. And her mature phase was also quite likeable, and I love how we could actually see how 'normal' she is when facing troubles and the anxiety she had about he marriage. For Ezaq though, I don't really have much thoughts about him, he's simply just a 'guy' to me in the story.
The 'progressive' points and discussions on the story were quite well written I'd say, not a lot of people could write them and blend it perfectly into stories / the plot without sounding 'forced' or 'out of blue'. A lot of it actually make sense and made quite a statement onto the plot itself. The messages and moral values written in the story were also my personal favourite, it actually did make me think a lot afterwards.
Well, now I'll now jump into the things I personally have issues with. Firstly, the plot progression feels extremely slow. On 2/3 through the story, I literally still couldn't see where exactly the story is going at all, where even it is leading us readers because things that what we thought might've been important actually doesn't bring much to the plot at all. On top of that, while there doesn't much going on 2/3rd of the story, suddenly everything were dropped off all at the same time at the final one third, from Delilah's background, her conflicts, Ezaq's personal conflicts, it's just an information overload being dumped at me as a reader. Sometimes it feels like some of the conflicts by the end only feels like a series plot convenient as it shows up too abruptly and sometimes it was never explained. On top of that, maybe due to this, I really had a hard time relating and understanding the characters on spiritual level?
On the other side, I'd mention about the elephant in the room, what was heavily promoted about the story itself — Delilah's ex boyfriend's murder. It's was mentioned on the blurb as well as the first thing on the prologue as if it's the main plot of the story. I genuinely expecting a murder mystery romance, expecting the incident to be the reason on change for Delilah, or at least something more involved around that plot, but none. The murder wasn't as significant to the story at all nor it's part of the main plot. Every 'reveal' surrounding the murder felt underwealming and the things related to it were technically only mentioned in a passing, due to this, I don't feel the plot was necessary at all. Apart from it being beneficial as a convenient that fixes some of her relationship or life issues, I don't quite see the entire point of it. Like, why even the blurb makes it as if she's guilty or something and the incident will change her life and cause trouble in her love life, when nothing happened. Heh.
This one might be entirely a me problem, as I'd like to mention that some people with spectrum could have trouble following the plot and the story. The large part of the book is written in the non-chorological writing style jumping between future past and present, and there are tons of frequent flashbacks, as well as a lot of sudden cliffhangers that will only be explained at much later section of the story; these things did make the plot even MORE confusing than it should be. Due to this, I really have a hard time remembering a lot of points because the jumps in timeline were so abrupt, up to the point I thought there was editing mistakes going on, but apparently it wasn't the case. Truthfully, a lot of things in the story that could just be told straightforwardly and doesn't need to be twisted or suddenly written in a suspense way.
Overall, this actually is quite a good story, although confusing at most part (for me the very least), the overall premise and the inclusion on topics surrounding high society was absolutely interesting nevertheless. Still an entertaining read I'd say.