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bookishbette's review
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Ultimately, if you like cozy no-spice romantasy with minimal world building and don't like to look at plot holes too closely, you'll enjoy this.
I, however, pull too much at every loose thread until all my sweaters unravel. So.
There are a variety of minor issues I have with this story, which I did receive as an ARC—formatting, for instance, consistently had me irritated, and sometimes sentences were structured in ways that I personally didn't like or found confusing. Those can all be fixed with a good copyedit, though, so I don't hold it against the book too strongly.
There are, however, GLARING issues to me, and they continued to bother me both while I read this and after the fact as I rotate this story in my head like it's a microwave.
First and absolutely foremost: there's literally no reason given for the FMC to leave wherever her family was originally living. NONE. Not even a throwaway comment, which I know, because I kept waiting for it. It has driven me absolutely up the wall trying to figure out if it was fantasy capitalism, loneliness, or something else, but we never find out, which ENRAGES ME.
Second is that this author seems to fluctuate wildly between No Detail and Too Much Detail. I couldn't tell you what any of these characters look like, because if they were ever described then it was so quick and never mentioned again that I completely missed it, except for a notable moment in the middle of the book where we discover that the main character's hair is blue (unless that's a copyedit mistake to be fixed, because it made No Sense to me in context, if I'm honest). There's a lot of skipping over important detail and conflict - every battle scene is over in what feels like ten seconds, and even when it should be High Stakes, it's absolutely not at all - and yet the author makes sure to walk us through every. single. step. of how they make coffee at the cafe in the royal library.
Every.
Single.
Step.
Now I do love some detailed worldbuilding, don't get me wrong, I'm very invested in how fantasy universes create coffee, but it just felt EXTREMELY out of place considering how little detail we get in basically every other scene. It leads to a lot of Telling rather than Showing, and as a result, everything from the fight results to the main romance feel extremely sudden and don't really make a lot of sense. We're just told "they love each other now" instead of being shown what that feels like and how it changes them apart from "her heart sped up" type things. The most moving moment of the entire book is at the very end with a dragon (surprise, there's drsgons, which aren't marketed at all, and make sense, but are a key feature of why this is 3 stars for me), when it should've been the FMC and MMC finally getting together.
I also feel like the tropes were very forced and didn't feel very natural or organic, most notably the Only One Bed trope, but it DID lead me to the hysterical mental image of three grown fae sharing a single bed, so that was fun. It's also very much marketed as Grumy X Sunshine, but the MMC isn't ever really....grumpy? In my opinion? The gargoyle character is grumpier at the start, imho, and the FMC seems to take literally everything personally even when it's just him taking a book from his family's library and calling her out on trying to stop him. And then after they fall in love (which is also not something that's depicted super clearly, but I'll get into that) he stops being grumpy At All, which I admit does seem common but is no less frustrating. Grumpy X Sunshine should STAY Grumpy X Sunshine and that's a hill that I absolutely will die on.
It's also not much of an Almost Why Choose, since it's pretty rushed imho and none of the other F4—I mean, Charming Four have any real chance with her. That paired with the lack of ~☆spice☆~ really just seal the fate for this, imho, and lead up to a rather anticlimactic romance.
(Note that I'm not a No Spice hater, I'm actually a Big Big fan of No Spice)
I will admit that this is all very biased, as I do Not vibe with the FMC very much—she's very much supposed to be brilliant and amazing, but we get sooooooo few instances where we're shown that and sooooooo many where we're shown otherwise that despite her (HEALTHY) ego, she just doesn't seem all that competent, especially with as often as she falls over.
Ultimately, I still had fun, and as I said, if you don't really care that much about the plot aspect then you'll be fine; if you're someone who likes k-dramas then you're probably going to have a good time, but if you've watched Meteor Garden or its original, Boys Over Flowers, then watch out, because you'll just be imagining the main characters of those shows instead of the actual ones, because it's nearly identical. Which doesn't surprise me at all, since the author's watched MG several times (as she should, it's phenomenal). Overall it felt too rushed for me, but still had fun. I can only hope there's a sequel where Daoming Si— I mean, Prince Finn's mom tries to break them up 😂
I, however, pull too much at every loose thread until all my sweaters unravel. So.
There are a variety of minor issues I have with this story, which I did receive as an ARC—formatting, for instance, consistently had me irritated, and sometimes sentences were structured in ways that I personally didn't like or found confusing. Those can all be fixed with a good copyedit, though, so I don't hold it against the book too strongly.
There are, however, GLARING issues to me, and they continued to bother me both while I read this and after the fact as I rotate this story in my head like it's a microwave.
First and absolutely foremost: there's literally no reason given for the FMC to leave wherever her family was originally living. NONE. Not even a throwaway comment, which I know, because I kept waiting for it. It has driven me absolutely up the wall trying to figure out if it was fantasy capitalism, loneliness, or something else, but we never find out, which ENRAGES ME.
Second is that this author seems to fluctuate wildly between No Detail and Too Much Detail. I couldn't tell you what any of these characters look like, because if they were ever described then it was so quick and never mentioned again that I completely missed it, except for a notable moment in the middle of the book where we discover that the main character's hair is blue (unless that's a copyedit mistake to be fixed, because it made No Sense to me in context, if I'm honest). There's a lot of skipping over important detail and conflict - every battle scene is over in what feels like ten seconds, and even when it should be High Stakes, it's absolutely not at all - and yet the author makes sure to walk us through every. single. step. of how they make coffee at the cafe in the royal library.
Every.
Single.
Step.
Now I do love some detailed worldbuilding, don't get me wrong, I'm very invested in how fantasy universes create coffee, but it just felt EXTREMELY out of place considering how little detail we get in basically every other scene. It leads to a lot of Telling rather than Showing, and as a result, everything from the fight results to the main romance feel extremely sudden and don't really make a lot of sense. We're just told "they love each other now" instead of being shown what that feels like and how it changes them apart from "her heart sped up" type things. The most moving moment of the entire book is at the very end with a dragon (surprise, there's drsgons, which aren't marketed at all, and make sense, but are a key feature of why this is 3 stars for me), when it should've been the FMC and MMC finally getting together.
I also feel like the tropes were very forced and didn't feel very natural or organic, most notably the Only One Bed trope, but it DID lead me to the hysterical mental image of three grown fae sharing a single bed, so that was fun. It's also very much marketed as Grumy X Sunshine, but the MMC isn't ever really....grumpy? In my opinion? The gargoyle character is grumpier at the start, imho, and the FMC seems to take literally everything personally even when it's just him taking a book from his family's library and calling her out on trying to stop him. And then after they fall in love (which is also not something that's depicted super clearly, but I'll get into that) he stops being grumpy At All, which I admit does seem common but is no less frustrating. Grumpy X Sunshine should STAY Grumpy X Sunshine and that's a hill that I absolutely will die on.
It's also not much of an Almost Why Choose, since it's pretty rushed imho and none of the other F4—I mean, Charming Four have any real chance with her. That paired with the lack of ~☆spice☆~ really just seal the fate for this, imho, and lead up to a rather anticlimactic romance.
(Note that I'm not a No Spice hater, I'm actually a Big Big fan of No Spice)
I will admit that this is all very biased, as I do Not vibe with the FMC very much—she's very much supposed to be brilliant and amazing, but we get sooooooo few instances where we're shown that and sooooooo many where we're shown otherwise that despite her (HEALTHY) ego, she just doesn't seem all that competent, especially with as often as she falls over.
Ultimately, I still had fun, and as I said, if you don't really care that much about the plot aspect then you'll be fine; if you're someone who likes k-dramas then you're probably going to have a good time, but if you've watched Meteor Garden or its original, Boys Over Flowers, then watch out, because you'll just be imagining the main characters of those shows instead of the actual ones, because it's nearly identical. Which doesn't surprise me at all, since the author's watched MG several times (as she should, it's phenomenal). Overall it felt too rushed for me, but still had fun. I can only hope there's a sequel where Daoming Si— I mean, Prince Finn's mom tries to break them up 😂
Content Warnings
Moderate: Genocide
Minor: Violence
The genocide mentioned is a past war with dragons and has a specific part where it's discussed pretty heavily, so use caution.
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