Review: Dark Heroine – Dinner With a Vampire

Dark Heroine – Dinner With a Vampire

Abigail Gibbs

1/5 Stars

This is probably the worst book I've ever had the displeasure of reading. I should warn you, my readers – that I did not, in fact, could not finish this book. It was that bad.

Slut shaming, mysogony, rape, abuse, sexual harassment – all seemingly used as positive plot developments.

This book should have a trigger warning on a label on the front of the book – warning women who have been in abusive relationships to steer clear. Heck – everyone should steer clear, but my heart goes out to any women who have been in such a relationship that find themselves reading this tripe.

This is a book written by an 18 year old who self published online. It gained so much fame that an honest to goodness publishing company wanted to publish it. The problem is that there was next to no editing to be done between “internet stardom” and “published book”. The spelling mistakes fly at you by the page, in fact, often by the paragraph.

The story itself makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The entire book is based on the protagonist seeing some vampires kill people in a public square at night. So they “steal” her and take her back to their base because now she's seen vampires. So her option is stay there forever or become a vampire. This would be fine and dandy as an explanation to keep her prisoner if it weren't for the fact that people in the outside world (political officials and the like) already know about vampires. Also, she's put in a scenario where she could just leave (escape) – but doesn't. The plot is wonky at best and offensive at worst.

I also felt no love for the protagonist, Violet. In fact, I kind of hated her. She annoyed the crap out of me throughout the entire book (or at least the three quarters of the book I managed to finish).

I pushed and pushed and pushed myself to try and finish this garbage, but in the end I could not. It was so bad I kept glaring at it on my nightstand, despising that I would eventually have to open it again to finish it. At last, I gave in and started a different book – feeling like there was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.

Avoid this book at all costs.

Review - Ascend - #3 Trylle Trilogy

Ascend – Trylle Trilogy #3

Amanda Hocking

2.5/5 Stars

Ascend is the finale of the Trylle trilogy – a series which I read back-to-back (to back) because I had them on hand and enjoyed them enough to do so. Ascend was probably the most disappointing of the trilogy – which is sad, as it's the series finale.

The book felt like a hastily written ending, which tried to wrap itself up too quickly.

It felt like Hocking was trying to force her readers to create “Teams” for her two...or three male love interests. You could either be “Team Finn” or “Team Loki”. Of course, there's also her platonic husband, Tove – I'm not sure if anyone was “Team Tove”, though. She introduced Loki far too abruptly and the entire relationship between him and the protagonist, Wendy seemed contrived at best. That being said, her relationship with Finn frequently made absolutely no sense – he likes her, he doesn't – he loves her, he won't look at her – just not a character you envision being the main love interest. I wasn't happy with who Wendy ended up with at the end of the book – but, to be fair, none of the options would have made me happy.

I did enjoy the changes we saw in Wendy – becoming a much stronger person and a better leader for her kingdom. It was probably the only thing I didn't mind being revealed to us too quickly.

The entire series could have fit in one book and made more sense. The constant reminders of a previous books activities were frequent and annoying. It felt like filler more than anything.

At first I enjoyed the series because it focused on a different mythology than what seems to be popular at the moment – it was neither fairies nor vampires. Trolls – neat. However, once the troll aspect was revealed, Hocking definitely dropped the ball on continuing to make us feel like we were in a troll populated world – they were just too human. Perhaps human living in a Renaissance monarchy – but still human, nonetheless.

The characters were poorly written and developed and bits of the story itself made no sense in the grand scheme of things. I think Hocking could have done a much better job with her Troll finale than what we were offered.