DNFd at 61% in, page 165.
I just got too bored.
I read the note the author put in the beginning about how writing this book helped her heal from her own abuse, and I’m so happy she found these words healing. I think that’s absolutely fantastic.
But I just continually lost interest the longer they stayed away from “court”.
Honestly? You can definitely tell that the author was writing therapeutically. The story just kind of fell flat after they left the prison. They’re supposed to be “lifebonds” but I felt like they were more friends/mentors than anything else. Besides anger and pain and a little embarrassment, I didn’t feel any emotion throughout the story. Especially not from the main characters to each other.
There’s a lot of scenes and explanations that just felt unnecessary and redundant. Like the scene where Keir goes out and hunts a man for his life essence. That was a whole chapter that felt so boring and unnecessary. It felt like this wasn’t edited, maybe not at all, but I’d Definitely say not enough.
Then there was the sex between Bran and Wren. I know that note I mentioned before from the author, mentioned that Wren wouldn’t get any coddling and that she preferred rougher sex because of her trauma, but wow. It wasn’t the roughness that made it feel off to me. I like rough sex. It was the way Wren described Bran’s attitude that made me feel uncomfortable.
Bran basically turned into a completely different person and acted so arrogant and uncaring, it felt like another assault. And then nothing happened afterward. No comments from the other guys, nothing.
I also didn’t like how they treated her after the incident in the bar. Again. I understand the author mentioned there would be no coddling, but everything between the four of them is so callous and cold. It made it feel like the three guys were very separate from Wren. They all had this camaraderie, they even joked about who got the most women and who satisfied them the most, while Wren was off to the side. It just reinforced my thoughts that they fit better into the friend/mentor category than the mate/lover one.
And the time frame is so weird. We go through a couple of months where it’s just them existing and that one sex scene before anything interesting happens again.
And then it gets confusing about where I decided to put it down for good. Doing two very opposite things from one sentence to the next in a blink.
They do a lot of mundane things that don’t seem to help move the story along, At All.
I don’t know. I liked the concept, but I got very bored with the execution.
Happy to hear this helped the author deal with her own trauma, though. If nothing else its good to know this book helped someone.