Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Ruthless Queen by Amanda Richardson

1 review

saramackenzi's review

dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

 

Okay so this book was 80% smexy time, 15% high school shenanigans, and 5% dealing with the major problem of the story.

I was into some of the smexy scenes but I felt like they were all sooo quick. They happened so often that I would assume they would get a bit better or longer but they maybe lasted a page or two and when I’m reading on my phone that’s really not a ton to read. What a world I live in, complaining about smexy scenes being too short for my taste.

A little bit into this book Briar decides they need to change everyone’s opinions about herself and the kings, aka high school shenanigans. Her way of doing this involves comparing for homecoming queen…. now I don’t know about everyone else, but at my high school, it was the popular students that nobody really liked except for other popular students so I just found this entire plot point amusing. I honestly didn’t care for this whole point but I’m reading a high school book so I’m not sure why I’m surprised homecoming is brought into it.

Now the main plot problem that was revealed in the last book… I’m really trying not to spoil anything but a certain character causes problems for the group and I wasn’t a huge fan of how it ended up unfolding. I found some of the choices Briar made regarding the situation and character very dumb. I also found some of the guys in these instances acted uncharacteristicly. For instance, being so insistent about her not being left alone and being safe but then leaving her alone??? I just think overall I didn’t like this whole plot and feel like it could’ve been one book with this “plot” left out.

I also found that this could have used some editing. Now I know that this was self-published and props to the author for even writing a book but there were some inconsistencies that could have been found with a reread or two. One that threw me was Briar’s mom telling her she was going to make her some tea while she showered. Briar goes upstairs and has a nice ole time with the 4 boys and then Hunter makes the comment about not knowing when their parents were going to get home and then they fall asleep. Uhm?? Your step-mother was in the kitchen making tea and your father was also in the house making a phone call. What do you mean you don’t know when they are getting home? There were also some spelling errors which again I know tend to happen with self-publishing but I figured I’d mention it while talking about the inconsistencies.

I’m just underwhelmed with the whole book and now duology in general. I think if I was looking for a bully romance, which is what this was marketed to me as, I’d go with another book because the bullying stopped way back 20% into the first book and somehow we got here to an unhappy reverse harem.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual content

Moderate: Death, Stalking, and Death of parent

Minor: Suicide and Pregnancy

the first chapter of this book recalls the main character rape from the year before. it goes into detail which I think can be triggering for people. Later in the book, the rapist is able to get the character alone and in order to try and gain time as well as get a chance to fight him off, the main character has to convince the rapist that she wanted him and always had. During this whole scene, he's messing with himself, is making comments, and almost rapes her again. I think this can be a lot for certain people and I personally didn't enjoy it.