Hayden > Recent Status Updates

Tessa’s vocabulary thus far:
- Crying
- Gasping
- “Wait”
- “What?”
- Em dash, literally all the time
- A few more em dashes
- More crying
As for a personality? An intelligent thought? All this courage and cleverness I’ve been hearing about?? Nowhere to be found. Maybe in 220 more pages, Tessa can turn into an actually interesting human being capable of complex brain processes.

I am very intrigued by the premise of this book, and I really want to give it a higher star rating when I’m done, but right now it’s just making me mad. Tessa. Girl. You’re supposed to be some badass smuggler, but all she’s done for the last 100 pages is bawl her eyes out. Someone even breathes in her direction and she’s sobbing. Please get a hold of yourself, this is embarrassing for all of us 🙄

So when we knowingly waste 20-30 pages getting down and dirty against a tree, despite knowing we are being hunted for sport, why are we actively surprised when said hunters ambush us in the woods? 95% of the injuries in this book could be prevented if we stopped putting our “primal desires” (gag) before our own survival. Girl, the sex is not that good, let’s get our priorities straight.

Quote I Hate of the Day: “The prince was an alpha in all the right ways.”
Mind you, FMC is being hunted through the forest by four apex Fae males (ugh) who very much want to murder her, but sure, let’s take a brain break and have cringe-inducing sex against a tree with the MMC. Survival instincts of a fart. If I have to read about “primal urges” one more time, I’m going to throw up.

For the last hundred pages or so, I was actually vibing with this book. The main characters were much less insufferable, and the stories they were trapped in were actually interesting. And then…
Quote I Hate of the Day: “My villain era was about to begin.”
Wow. Nothing takes me out of a fantasy story faster than a line spoon-fed straight from BookTok. Reading this book is going to inspire my villain era 🙄

Holy insta-love. Bashing my head into the wall over: “He wanted me to guard my heart, but … he was starting to become the biggest threat to it. He was inadvertently channeling some serious main love interest energy.” Jesus. Is this a fantasy novel in a fantasy world, or is this more BookTok propaganda? Dear FMC, we aren’t even a third of the way through the book, please keep it in your pants.

Guys, I really, really want to like this book. But I’m not even a third of the way in and I already want to DNF. This book has swerved into trope-infested territory, and it’s too much for me. I have read some variation of “main character energy” no less than 1000 times. My breaking point: “A ruthless alpha starts dominating my brain, I start panting like a beta in heat.” Barf. Kill. Me. Now.