★★★★★ 4
An easy PNR book to cure book hangovers.....
Format: Kindle
I enjoyed this as a short story; but nothing truly pulled me into this world to want to keep reading each story. I can sense the overarching villain arc w/ the HAF; yet it still wasn't enough to capture me long-term. It felt like too much focus was placed on progressing the romance part that everything else took a non-existent back seat. This did work well for my intentions of getting over a book-hangover slump. So there's that lol. A Tip to overcome a PNR book hangover, from a wonderful series or novel......read a trope-y, lighthearted, PNR that is easily predictable but adorable. Like this book.
Honestly, I'm rarely into short stories that are turned into a ridiculous amount of books on different PNR characters. So I'm not the best at judging the merits of these stories. I'm a long-haul type of reader that lives for a series surrounding 1 lead female character & her harem (or singular partner). Occassionally, I'll find a series of short stories that are interesting enough to finish or pull me in completely. The rarity of that is countable on 1.5 hands, compared to the literal hundreds of fiction books I've read lol.
With all of that, I will say this was fun because of the FMC's difficulties growing up & how that made her strong, the end reveals of her life, & the cute Epilogues. I never felt truly connected to any of the characters; but I did feel slightly compelled to just finish it to see how plot points would end.
Unfortunately, due to a lack of character backstory explanations, I still don't understand Collete's "magic". Very little time was given to flesh out the backstory of the world this occurs in. I couldn't even guess what type of magic occurs in this world, aside from what little was revealed. A random scene sticks out to me...... we're introduced to a new magic type, in passing. No dialogue to expand. No hint at anything really. Then the scene moves on. That moment felt pointless to even mention, afterwards.
It felt like the author was more concerned w/ romance than storyline. This is a common issue I have w/ short stories....authors write them for whatever reason; but too often it's an "either or" theme.....EITHER the author is writing ONLY for romance w/ storyline taking a minor role OR writing ONLY for storyline w/ some romance that ends up feeling forced. As I mentioned earlier, only a handful of short stories series have ever had a balance of both sides, for me, that I wanted to read all of them.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2021
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