Reviews

A Venom Dark and Sweet by Judy I. Lin

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hazelnutpie's review against another edition

2.0

I agree with the other reviewers that this series should have been a standalone instead with elements from this book added to the first one, bc more than half of this novel was completely pointless and there is a surprising lack of tea magic to make up for it. Near the end, the novel suddenly becomes a fetch quest except all the items are gathered already, and then the climax is so rushed that i'm still not sure what happened except we defeated the villain so yay? The epilogue mentions a time skip where the two mcs go on a journey around the empire and presumably gain actual romantic chemistry?

The ending felt very rushed and it felt like the author had no idea how to write it, so she just went with a very generic ya fantasy plot. There were a lot of dropped plot points like what the hell was going on at Hanxia, the allies of the princess in the palace (seriously why was that even a thing?), why Ning is touched by the gods and is so much more powerful than the other shennong-shi, was Kang's mother killed by the serpent, and so on.

I think the author is very good at describing scenery and food beautifully and creating atmosphere, but needs a lot of improvement in storytelling fundamentals like pacing and showing instead of telling. I read this book right after I finished the first one and even now I still struggle to remember the plot points or anything memorable about the characters bc everything is told in this monotone, detached narration style that is very unengaging (it makes the dual povs read the same) and makes all the characters seem very one-dimensional.

TL;DR: Could have been a standalone

korecox's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

larslovesbooks's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced

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

1.5

I didn’t enjoy this very much and it took me ages to finish. Give has this in hold for a few months. My review of the first book was that it’s not for me and I should have stuck to my guns but I was curious to see how it plays out. I’ve just finished reading this and I don’t think I can tell you what happened in the first half of the book. If you liked book 1 you will like this and if you didn’t - I wouldn’t bother as this is much of the same.