If I could give this book zero stars, you'd bet your ass I'd do it.
**Light Review of the Plot, nothing too spoilery**
I've never in my life encountered a book that had absolutely nothing - and I'm dead fucking serious - redeemable about it. This book has managed it.
Something in me wanted to leave the one star rating and throw this on the trash heap where it belongs, but I've been irritated enough into explaining my many, many grievances.
I bought this book on kindle because I encountered the author randomly on Instagram, and she claimed to make six figures writing vampire romance novels. I was interested, because it's damn hard to make six figures - consistently - as a writer. I like the vampire genre, and I was surprised to have never heard of her series, which, naturally, should be quite popular if she's banking a six figure salary off her work. I'm now willing to bet that this claim was a load of bollocks.
That sounds harsh. Let me explain - I absolutely refuse to believe that this book has been through an actual publishing process. I refuse to believe that this was edited, and proofread, and had real human beta readers. I R E F U S E to believe that professionals working in this industry said, yup, that's good to go my guy. If anything, this felt like I was reading the misshapen corpse of someone's discarded first draft.
I'll give an example off the top of my head. In one of the first chapters, Scarlet apparently has snow white hair. This struck me as odd, because the girl on the front cover (of my kindle version) has dark hair. Okay, no problem, I'll breeze past that. Only, how could I? Because almost every single page of this book drips with she's so PRETTY. She's so BEAUTIFUL. But... I got to the end of the book and hadn't even received one full description of Scarlet, who, to be super special and super unique, demands to be called Scar on one page, because apparently that's badass and not super fucking cringe, but this nickname is never mentioned ever again. I had no actual awareness of Scarlet, there was no sense of self, no palpable essence, no soul.
I'll give you another example. One of the super hot and super interchangeable vampire boys, this one called Drax, sniffs a drug called Ice upon the very first meeting with Scarlet. Where she, predictably, slams into him in a hallway and topples to the floor. Like, he sniffs it right then and there. Three quarters of the way through the book, and Drax is going through withdrawals, and Scarlet is shocked that he'd ever take something like Ice.
It's as if this author slammed out a first draft, didn't bother to do a re-read, didn't bother to edit, and posted it online ready to be paid for.
And the plot... My god. My good, fucking god. Let me ramble in the actual style of the writing (Scarlet is good at that, as she points out every four chapters) so you can see where my fury has come from.
So there's like... Vampires, right? And they rule America. Dunno about the world, it's not mentioned. Except when one of the super hot vampire boys is said to have an English accent, but this is never mentioned again, so shut up. Anyway, there's these trials. They might happen every five years, of they might happen every year, I don't know. They're like... Barbaric, no examples of this are given to build any depth, so shut up. And like, Scarlet, okay. She's like... Super badass. Except, she's really unfit and can't run anywhere, but like, she can totally shoot a gun halfway through the book, this is never mentioned before either. And like, there's vampire boys. There's three of them. No description of them is given, so like, we don't know what they look like, we just know that they're hot. One is sweet, one is a drug addict which means he's fun, the other one is like, scary and HATES Scarlet, but jumps in front of a bullet for her. Shut up, I know it doesn't make sense, just go with it. Anyway, without any sort of prompting or effort or events, everyone in the whole entire country starts to oppose the trials because Scarlet is in them. Like, for no other reason. It's because she's in them, and that's it. And like, she's super relatable and really funny because she mentions the word vagina in a national broadcast while trying to rally the nation to her cause to stop the trials. Also, there's witches and werewolves, but like, we mention them in the last thirty pages when apparently witches are helping make the trials more dangerous. Did I mention, there's also a wall around the whole of New York? Yeah, we won't introduce that fact until the last 50 pages either, but that's no problem. Also like, Scarlet isn't a slut, and doesn't know anything about sex, and she's not got time for boys or make-up in the first 150 pages, but like, she sleeps with four boys in one day and that's super normal and not weird at all.
I kept reading this book because I was like huh, okay, maybe the sex is going to be good. That's what this is all geared towards, right? Wrong. The sex is bad, so bad.
Listen, I sound deranged. I don't want to be so angry about this. And hey, give it a go to see for yourself. I really did think the concept had potential, and I assumed there must have been something okay about them for the author to have that cracking salary.
Honestly though, just drop me a message and I'll be happy to provide you with better written fanfiction on wattpad. Goddamn.