Status Updates From Walk Between Worlds

ok i'm enjoying the setup of this so far, but i'm gonna be real, i cannot take any of these names seriously.

scratch: I've been a soldier for years, which you have known from the beginning, so yes, I have killed people
brella: [gasp] you've KILLED PEOPLE? MORE THAN ONE PERSON? IN BATTLE? OH THE BETRAYAL, OH THE HORROR, OH THE DISGUST

are we. are we kidding? that whole scene actually happened? what did Brella think a soldier's duties include???

This is an adult book - all the characters are adults with stable careers, there's f-bombs and a quite explicit reading aloud of what Wooden Overcoats would call a Raunchy Book - but they act like some of the stupidest, densest YA protagonists I've read. I keep thinking, "THIS is an adult woman who expected her king to laud her for her battlefield acumen???" and then remembering she went off to cry when he didn't.

there's a deep lack of genuine chemistry between Scratch and her obvious love interest, mostly just artificial arguments and "Scratch didn't know why but she wanted Brella to trust her!!" statements. it's almost as insulting as the hand-wavey, "I don't want to do any work on my setting so I'll just throw names of random contextless places so my Wood Between the Worlds ripoff sounds legit" method of worldbuilding.

not sure how many "ooh I'm such a small woman and everyone looks down on me and expects less of me because I'm a girl and soooo smaaaaall" moments from this heroine I can handle, but Samara Breger has another book I'm interested in so I'm going to stick it out for now.