fangirljeanne's reviews
1182 reviews

CW: Incest, ableism, poor handling of mental illness, kidnapping, degradation kink, anti-sex work language, internalized misogyny.

Narration review: Shane East, Stella Hunter, Diontae Black, Curtis Michael Holland, and Roxy Isles all did an amazing job. I’m usually not a fan of a large cast for audiobooks but here it really helped me keep trade of the many povs and made the characters feel more distinct. Despite my issues with the book itself the audiobook was a wonderful listening experience. 

M/F polyamorous smutty retelling-ish of Peter Pan.

What I liked:

• The little bit of world building we get is very interesting. I enjoyed the twist on the world of original story.
• I like that there were attempts to give Winnie agency over her sexuality and her attempts to use it to get the upper hand.
• I liked Vane (I’m aware that might reflect poorly on me).


The Problems

• The incest (twincest). While the twins don’t have sexual with each other, they have sex with Winne at the same time and even seem to get off on watching each other. That’s incest in my book. There was no trigger warnings present j. The audiobook and it’s not listed on the content warnings on the authors website. I had no warning and it’s presented very explicitly as sexy for everyone involved. 
• The world building was under developed. Much of the promising potential felt wasted. It was jarringly different from the world of the source material but never =.

Tags: light kink (consensual restraint and chasing), pregnancy, child birth, Disney Princess jokes, alien attempt at a Jewish wedding, public sex.

If there’s such a thing as cozy science fiction most of this series would be in it, this book especially. This is primarily a story of a couple reflecting on the early days of their relationship when they were navigating their sexual desires and personal boundaries.

I loved how much time and care was taken to show Nora’s journey through the internalized shame over her kinky past. And how she misunderstands Dahesh’s fear of hurting her as disgust. In this story the “misunderstanding” trope is actually very realistic and handled with compassion and humor. It’s rare to see Jewish representation in this genre, and it’s not an obstacle. It’s normalized and it’s used to demonstrate the love of the community these ladies and their big blue men have created.

This is a sweet, sexy sci fi story.

DNF

Someone described this as “smutty Walking dead if Rick and Daryl shared a girlfriend.” I have to disagree. This is more like Negan apologist fan fiction.

The first dude’s POV reads like a rapist. A man who gets turned on by a terrified woman fighting for her life isn’t good guy, even in a morally gray zombie apocalypse. I really hate how often the Dark Romance genre tries to use the setting as some sort of excuse for making genuinely horrific behavior (like viewing a woman as a sexual object that he posses before even knowing her name) seem acceptable or worse appealing.

This was repugnant and boring.

TW: Non-con/Rape, mind control, zombies, explicit descriptions of gore, mentions of infant death, and mutilation of bodies.

The writing is pretty good and the world building is intriguing. I even liked a few ofthe characters, but the rape/sexual abuse via mind control pulled me out of the story. 

I don’t have an issue reading about abuse and rape, and I was prepared for it in this book. My issue is I prefer for the rape to be presented either as horrific or the unspoken desire of the participants (internal character consent). However, I have a visceral hate for humiliation play. I especially dislike a woman’s sexuality or sexual desire being used to humiliate her without her consent (I’ve read a couple of books with consensual humiliation play that I enjoyed, but it’s rarely d one well).

At the beginning of this couples relationship mind control is used to not only coerce a woman into sex, but it’s implied that it’s also being used to make her body react with sexual arousal. This isn’t a new plot device in erotica, and I am very familiar with it. But for me, in this book it skirted really close to a kind of sex ual abuse that leads a lot of survivors to believe they’re responsible for o r even wanted the abuse because of their bodies reactions to the abuse.

My reaction was quite visceral and it’s lingered, souring any interest I initially had in the book. Which is sad, I didn’t like it up until then, especially the necromancy like magic. But the handling of the sex and power dynamics ruined any enjoyment I might have had in it.

PS I would like to add to people who say shit “well he’s a villain what did you expect,” that’s a lazy cop out. Not all “villians” are rapists, just as not all stories have to have sexual violence. There’s a lot of ways to write a woman grappling with her desire for a powerful amoral man without him sexually abusing her.

Disclaimer: I was given a free audiobook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

TW: There are brief moments when a trans character is called by their dead name. Instances of substance use (alcohol and opioids). Accurate depiction of PTSD. Ableism directly addressed as harmful and wrong.  

Narration review: Kay Eluvian gives a top tier performance. She breathed life into each character, and had me swooning and blushing over Viola and Gracewood. Talk about bi panic. 😅⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the historical Trans woman led Romance I’ve been waiting for my whole life. Viola is my heart. She’s so beautiful and funny, and feminine. Her struggle is so real and relatable. I loved how she was allowed time and space to grow, and come to love on her own terms. I also treasure how many women are in the story, as well as queer and trans characters too. But I especially loved how she was able to be her authentic self with her family, and had a support system before having to deal with society as herself.

Gracewood, ah Gracewood. He’s all the things one could comes to expect in a Romance novel Duke. Restrained strength, stern but polite manners, and enough emotional trauma to choke a horse. He’s wounded in so many ways, but they’re not framed as plot convinces. The story, and Viola in particular, treats him like a whole person. Shows him respect and allows him dignity while he struggles to adjust to his disability. He too has changed since the war and has his own reckoning of sorts with the man he is opposed to the man he was raised to be. I loved how his struggle with toxic masculinity was handled with compassion.

This entire story is a skilled challenge to gender roles in general, but their part in the popular tropes of Historical Romance specifically. All the tent poles of the genre are present. From the country estates to the Season in Town, to a scandal that threatens the reputation of a lady. Yet, at every turn the gendered aspect, expectations are subverted in clever ways that humanized the characters. Not just the leads, all the characters. 

Despite the very angsty set up this story felt like a warm hug to my soul. I fell fast and hard for Viola and Gracewood. Though I was anxious and impatient for them to work things out, I was never bored nor did I want to skip ahead because the entire cast were engaging and endearing. I love them all so much, I’m crossing my fingers for more novels about the supporting characters. 

I did not expect there to be an explicit sex scene, which is very much a mark of my own biased assumptions about how these two would or could navigate sex in this era. Shame on me. Because they have sex, glorious heart stopping sex that had me breathless and blushing.

This book utterly amazing. A fantastic Regency Romance, with a wonderfully determined and witty heroine and an intense restrained and swoony hero. And a supporting cast that will have you rolling with laughter and wishing you could crawl into the book to have tea and swap gossip with them all.

I highly recommend this to fans of Austen, Bridgeton, Regency Romance and having sex with pretty shoes on.-

TW: misrepresentation of mental illness, copaganda, drug use, graphic violence, mentions of child sexual abuse, anti-fatness. 

Meh.

The premise is bold. Like a mashup of Batman, Queer as Folk, and Dexter. Where Bruce Wayne was a wealthy scientist who decided to raise a bunch of orphans to be vigilante serial killers, who are all super hot gay white boys. While I did find the bickering among the “psycho” siblings to be funny. The rest of the story is slow, boring insta-love tragedy porn.

This has most of the big Dark Romances tropes including dubious consent, morality chain, heteronormative power dynamics. If someone’s looking for them with young conventionally attractive white gay boys this book delivers.

I on the other hand was bored and annoyed with the contradiction of subtext conservative politics in a book about queer characters. Bleh

Boring shallow characters. Meh.