Reviews with content warning for Death - Darkfever

I started skimming at around the 30 page mark, which is not a good sign. The main character was annoying, the potential love interest already reeked of abuse (in their second interaction he gave her a giant bruise across her whole torso just to show that he could), the characters were flat, and to top it all off there was some seriously uncomfortable borderline racist comments in the narration.

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roseamillerg's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

2.0

The main character is so ignorant🤦‍♀️

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k_tiches's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

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cealotte's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

2.0

I was pretty hopefully for this book. I love fae stories in modern settings, and I was excited for the pairing of that with a murder mystery. However, this book was such a letdown. The narration of the story (first-person) actively spoiled parts of the plot, letting you know before something happened that the main character (and sometimes others) survived and later had thoughts about how the specific moment went down. The main character also spent a lot of time on asides or mini rants about unrelated topics--in a way that felt more like a venting of the author's opinions than a productive. (For example: rants about how the millennial generation is entitled in the middle of nowhere.)

I do acknowledge that this book was written in the early 2000s, however I still was disappointed by some of the problematic parts of the story. There's a lot of misogyny and internalized misogyny. Not just from a specific characters, which would be fine. But from every angle. There's also a moment when a character is described as "Saudi" and that is directly associated with him being "fierce, dark and ruthless."

I also expected that there would be more romance in this book, as it is a romance. The main relationship is set up to be almost an enemies to lovers. The two characters butt heads constantly and seem to viscerally dislike each other. However, this plays out in the guy (Barrons) being quite abusive towards Mac. During an initial meeting, he slams her into the wall and pins her there till she can't breathe, causing her to be in a lot of pain later. It's not sexy or kinky: it's violent. He then continues to insult her, bully her, and control her actions throughout the rest of the book.

The romance also doesn't even develop during this story. (I'm assuming it kicks in in the subsequent novels in the series.) The two characters simply antagonize each other until the very end, when all of a sudden they show each other some basic decency--and there's a possible kiss.

There are two scenes with sexual content. However, they're both non-consensual moments when a fae being of dubious motivation whips the main character into a frenzy in an uncomfortably public place. It just reads incredibly awkwardly. If you're reading this book looking for spicy content, it technically exists but I would look elsewhere.

I bumped my rating to 2 stars purely because part of me is curious to read the next book.

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pos1t1vel1fe's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark informative mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

This book has issues with perspective. Which get in the way of the story also the author is weirdly obsessed with telling us the main characters nail polish or gloss colour.

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