Book reviews: (mostly) DNF edition

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Genre: NA, contemporary, queer romance

DNF ~25%

I talked a bit about this book in my previous post, but I had a few more thoughts.

I love the enemies-to-lovers trope, but it's also difficult to pull off well. This book was a major disappointment in that regard, because it went almost straight from hate to lust.

And...I hate that. I really do. Enemies-to-lovers is fascinating to me when the story spends time showing how the characters overcome their initial hostility toward each other, which lends itself to a kind of slow burn. When the romance goes straight from "I hate you" to "but you're hot so let's bone," I feel cheated of all that potential for interesting character development.

I already talked about how the book gave me a voyeuristic feeling in my previous post, but to recap a little: Reading this book made me feel like the author just really wanted to write about a First Son of the US and a Prince of Wales banging a lot.

Apparently this book has a forced public outing later on, and learning that killed my desire to continue reading for good. The "forced public outing for drama" trope has been done to death in indie queer romance already—it's become, in many cases, a tired, unimaginative, almost stereotypical cliché. (I know it's kind of a spoiler, but I'm including it here as a content warning.)

I know this sounds like sour grapes, but...I'm more than a little salty about the fact that the few traditionally published queer romance books get SO much more attention and accolades for doing things that...indie-published queer romance books have already been doing. For years. When I picked up RWRB, I expected to be blown away based on the hype, and...I wasn't. It was just a very average queer romance, not so different from the books I've been reading for literally 4 years now.

I would enjoy tradpubbed queer romances more if I didn't read indie. But I do. And it kind of feels unfair that there's honestly a HUGE pool of queer fiction that most people don't even touch and then talk about how starved they are for queer lit.



Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

Genre: YA, fantasy

DNF ~50%

This book definitely gave off strong Beauty and the Beast retelling vibes (especially the emphasis on books and the magical mirror) (and maybe it's just me, but when I see "demonic servant," I think of the anime/manga Black Butler).

This book started out so promisingly—magical books! sorcerers!—but it had the opposite problem as RWRB: the enemies-to-lovers setup went from "hate" to "avoid each other for [at least] half of the book."

And it's not that I demand romantic A plots in every book I read (far from it!), but the plot started to sag around the halfway point, and I felt that developing the relationship between Nathaniel and Elisabeth could've propped up the story. As it was, when I saw my copy was due back to the library next week, I decided (a) I wasn't going to be able to finish the book, and (b) I had no desire to re-reserve it in order to finish.



Nocturna by Maya Motayne

Genre: YA, fantasy

DNF ~33%

Another book that started out so promisingly.

I loved the Latinx fantasy* aspect of this. And the characters! And the plot! Finn was a bit "generic spunky female thief" for me, but I adored Alfie and his vividly drawn grief over the disappearance of his brother. The card game scene was fantastic, demonstrating how intriguing the magic system was.

And then, at the end of Act I, it all went...(sigh).

Several reviewers have called this book a "rip-off" of A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. I actually didn't like ADSoM (apparently I'm the only one who didn't)—I thought the worldbuilding was shallow and the characters uninteresting. I was okay with overlooking the fact that Alfie had portal-opening magic like Kell and Finn was a thief like Lila, because I thought Alfie and Finn were far better-written characters and the worldbuilding in Nocturna was way more interesting than that of ADSoM.

Then came the plot twist that highly resembles ADSoM.

And I'm disappointed, not (only) because of the similarity, but also because I didn't like that plot point in ADSoM, either (I finished reading that book very slowly and only because (a) I had a free copy, and (b) I had nothing to do at my day job for a few weeks).

And the thing is, the plot shift also feels like it came out of nowhere. Maybe there's an explanation later that ties it all together, but right now it just seems like a random plot direction change, as though ADSoM was the "template" the author was using for the plot.

Which is such, such a shame, because like I said, I loved the book up to that point.** I wanted more scenes like the card game or Finn's heist in the palace. I don't want to read about sentient magic trying to possess a host and destroy the world.

So yeah, that's my reaction in a word: disappointment.


* I really liked that the book dealt with colonization, but—and this is out of my lane, FYI—I wondered a bit at the choice of an England-analogue as the colonizing country, while Castallan—which sounds an awful lot like Castilian of Spain, and the native language is based off Spanish—is supposed to be Latinx-based. And yet, IRL, Spain was the colonizer of Latin America, conquering (and attempting genocide of) the indigenous people. Just a thought I had.

** My only other quibble was that I felt the writing style sometimes relied on telling rather than showing, robbing the reader of a more immediate, visceral reading experience. But it wasn't that bad overall.



Under His Protection by LaQuette

Genre: Adult, queer romance, contemporary

Okay, this is cheating a little since I DO intend to finish this, but it's just taking me forever to get through this book (which is highly unusual for me), so I'm putting down some thoughts here.

I wanted to support a black author in this genre, and the premise was really cool, but this romance just feels so...melodramatic in the way it's written. The explicit scenes are difficult for me to take seriously because this is one of Those Books that talk about how it's *so different* and *so special* when it's with your soulmate, and the scenes also go on and on FOREVER.

So...yeah. Sigh. I'm disappointed.



Descendant of the Crane by Joan He

Genre: YA, fantasy

Finally! A book that I didn't DNF!!

I enjoyed this a lot. The twists and turns are genuinely surprising (although it's weird that this book is considered a standalone when the ending is pretty cliffhanger-y). There were maybe two revelations that came out of nowhere without much setup, but otherwise the plot was quite well done. Definitely worth checking out if you want some good Chinese fantasy.