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A review by blvelances
Pretty Venom by Ella Fields
3.0
it’s a theme in this series that the male characters do their worse to hurt the female characters… and they just take it until the males change
you’d think this one was different you know since we know from the other books that renee cheated on callum?
except the cheating part has to be excused so - i should have expected callum to be treating her badly even before any cheating happened
from the first second in this book he was treating her badly. then something switched they dated for a second, he threw a tantrum over her not being overjoyed with their mothers’ plans to have them married when they were 18… so got married.
and then went to college… where he proceeded to ignore her immediately. yo hang out with his friends. and then call her needy and insecure. all that unwarranted
but then she cheats (after he had gone home smelling like another girl AND she saw girls touching him btw) while being extremely drunk and suddenly of course he cares.
(and btw alcohol isn’t an excuse yada yada - except no one can consent when they’re too drunk to know what they’re doing and too drunk to remember it. it was extremely hard for me to read that part because it’s a little worse than cheating. )
parenthesis aside, callum now has ANOTHER reason to be terrible renee, even though he never needed a reason he was doing fine on his own
and for some reason, for the same mysterious reason that made daisy wait for her ex boyfriend and go to college to be together again with him while quinn had started dating daisy’s ex best friend, and the same reason that made pippa forgive each and every of toby’s offenses and even wait around for a little less than a year while he gave her no news at all
(the reason is that some authors and readers want their female characters to be tortured)
second parenthesis but renee basically only came to gray springs only to be with callum, even though the university didn’t really have what she wanted in terms of education- great right
« I’d always known what she was capable of. I just never thought she’d set her sights on destroying me. » ??? boy what - this book calling renee pretty venom but never showing examples is simply bad writing. none of her actions have shown what the boy who supposedly dated her for over three years is saying here. she didn’t even cheat out of spite
and btw the story COULD have been that renee was tired of being ignored and kissed mike to ignite a reaction out of callum. and then she’d have regretted it and the quote above could have been warranted. it would have been much better than this weird dubbcon
« Falling in love changed you bit by bit in a way you didn’t realize until that love had left you suffocating in the remaining pieces » were was that love before ? love is more than pretty words it’s actions
« In the downstairs bathroom, I stared at my reflection, the milky pallor to my skin, my defined cheekbones more prominent, and my hair, curled yet still flat.
Lifeless. As though who I was had been seeping out of my pores every day for the past year, and it was starting to show. »
over a man who basically never deserved her ? who never acknowledged even once he had treated her badly since they first arrived to college
who hasn’t ONCE looked for an explanation and simply kept of hating her and talking about prey to her when he was treating her like less trash
and then after all the suffering comes the truth: she actually did not fuck mike and he lied - to complete the martyr act. she was (kinda) innocent after all
and funny when callum is now chasing her he’s sending presents, and she’s not fucking anyone else. his pride gets to remain great while she gets to remain chaste (because it’s VERY important in this series as well)
knowing where the story was going, why couldn’t the author erase some of those ideas she had from the book?
- callum getting a bj from renee’s roommate et renee walking in on them
- all the times they had sex and he treated her like garbage
- all the time he talked to her and about her like garbage
- how many months the whole ordeal lasted
the book could have been about the aftermath instead. some things are hard to forget or forgive and i’m sorry but since their problems started when they arrived at college, i would have loved to see them be a real couple in college. see how callum’s behavior changed. but of course none of that happened (just like it didn’t for toby and pippa for whom i had the exact same problem - why keep piling up the offenses and then sweep them under the rug and jump to 10years later?)
it seems me from the past read this book and rated it 5stars and ??? it absolutely doesn’t deserve 5 stars. renee as a character does though
reneecallum could have been a worthy couple as well based on their personality and plot but the author decided to handle it badly
you’d think this one was different you know since we know from the other books that renee cheated on callum?
except the cheating part has to be excused so - i should have expected callum to be treating her badly even before any cheating happened
from the first second in this book he was treating her badly. then something switched they dated for a second, he threw a tantrum over her not being overjoyed with their mothers’ plans to have them married when they were 18… so got married.
and then went to college… where he proceeded to ignore her immediately. yo hang out with his friends. and then call her needy and insecure. all that unwarranted
but then she cheats (after he had gone home smelling like another girl AND she saw girls touching him btw) while being extremely drunk and suddenly of course he cares.
(and btw alcohol isn’t an excuse yada yada - except no one can consent when they’re too drunk to know what they’re doing and too drunk to remember it. it was extremely hard for me to read that part because it’s a little worse than cheating. )
parenthesis aside, callum now has ANOTHER reason to be terrible renee, even though he never needed a reason he was doing fine on his own
and for some reason, for the same mysterious reason that made daisy wait for her ex boyfriend and go to college to be together again with him while quinn had started dating daisy’s ex best friend, and the same reason that made pippa forgive each and every of toby’s offenses and even wait around for a little less than a year while he gave her no news at all
(the reason is that some authors and readers want their female characters to be tortured)
second parenthesis but renee basically only came to gray springs only to be with callum, even though the university didn’t really have what she wanted in terms of education- great right
« I’d always known what she was capable of. I just never thought she’d set her sights on destroying me. » ??? boy what - this book calling renee pretty venom but never showing examples is simply bad writing. none of her actions have shown what the boy who supposedly dated her for over three years is saying here. she didn’t even cheat out of spite
and btw the story COULD have been that renee was tired of being ignored and kissed mike to ignite a reaction out of callum. and then she’d have regretted it and the quote above could have been warranted. it would have been much better than this weird dubbcon
« Falling in love changed you bit by bit in a way you didn’t realize until that love had left you suffocating in the remaining pieces » were was that love before ? love is more than pretty words it’s actions
« In the downstairs bathroom, I stared at my reflection, the milky pallor to my skin, my defined cheekbones more prominent, and my hair, curled yet still flat.
Lifeless. As though who I was had been seeping out of my pores every day for the past year, and it was starting to show. »
over a man who basically never deserved her ? who never acknowledged even once he had treated her badly since they first arrived to college
who hasn’t ONCE looked for an explanation and simply kept of hating her and talking about prey to her when he was treating her like less trash
and then after all the suffering comes the truth: she actually did not fuck mike and he lied - to complete the martyr act. she was (kinda) innocent after all
and funny when callum is now chasing her he’s sending presents, and she’s not fucking anyone else. his pride gets to remain great while she gets to remain chaste (because it’s VERY important in this series as well)
knowing where the story was going, why couldn’t the author erase some of those ideas she had from the book?
- callum getting a bj from renee’s roommate et renee walking in on them
- all the times they had sex and he treated her like garbage
- all the time he talked to her and about her like garbage
- how many months the whole ordeal lasted
the book could have been about the aftermath instead. some things are hard to forget or forgive and i’m sorry but since their problems started when they arrived at college, i would have loved to see them be a real couple in college. see how callum’s behavior changed. but of course none of that happened (just like it didn’t for toby and pippa for whom i had the exact same problem - why keep piling up the offenses and then sweep them under the rug and jump to 10years later?)
it seems me from the past read this book and rated it 5stars and ??? it absolutely doesn’t deserve 5 stars. renee as a character does though
reneecallum could have been a worthy couple as well based on their personality and plot but the author decided to handle it badly