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A review by elenajohansen
Betrayal by Aleatha Romig
2.0
As romances with cliffhangers go, that last chapter had me wanting to read the next book. A lot of work clearly went into filling the ending with unresolved tension that begged me to buy the second installment.
Too bad the rest of the book wasn't nearly that good, so I was easily able to resist.
The plot was reasonably predictable. Alexandria/Alex/Charli's identity crisis was layered on way too thick, especially because her "Charli" persona, who was supposed to be wild, was still pretty tame. Nox was as bland as a dominant alpha-male character can get. So I wasn't that attached to the characters, either.
The sex scenes were meh at best.
What really bothered me, though, was the structure. Okay, so the present timeline and the flashback timeline are both moving forward as the book goes on, no problem, pretty standard. But when I read the flashback scene that covered the last morning of Alex's vacation (and thus the last morning of her week with Nox) I expected the flashback timeline to end there, because that was the whole point of that arc of the story. Except it didn't. There was another flashback chapter after that, talking about the day before their last day together. So, flashback within a flashback? Or just sloppy construction? In addition, after most of the book is exclusively from Alex's first-person POV, near the very end, suddenly Nox is a POV character, for just long enough to explain how he and "Charli" are barreling toward their unplanned reunion. Since it's such a short blip in an otherwise Alex-centered book, I feel like it would have been more useful to have him explain it to Alex in person (in her POV) rather than drag the reader through it firsthand. And if that wouldn't work with the timeline established here, it could fit in the second book easily, because without his section, I think there would have actually been more suspense at the end.
Too bad the rest of the book wasn't nearly that good, so I was easily able to resist.
The plot was reasonably predictable. Alexandria/Alex/Charli's identity crisis was layered on way too thick, especially because her "Charli" persona, who was supposed to be wild, was still pretty tame. Nox was as bland as a dominant alpha-male character can get. So I wasn't that attached to the characters, either.
The sex scenes were meh at best.
What really bothered me, though, was the structure. Okay, so the present timeline and the flashback timeline are both moving forward as the book goes on, no problem, pretty standard. But when I read the flashback scene that covered the last morning of Alex's vacation (and thus the last morning of her week with Nox) I expected the flashback timeline to end there, because that was the whole point of that arc of the story. Except it didn't. There was another flashback chapter after that, talking about the day before their last day together. So, flashback within a flashback? Or just sloppy construction? In addition, after most of the book is exclusively from Alex's first-person POV, near the very end, suddenly Nox is a POV character, for just long enough to explain how he and "Charli" are barreling toward their unplanned reunion. Since it's such a short blip in an otherwise Alex-centered book, I feel like it would have been more useful to have him explain it to Alex in person (in her POV) rather than drag the reader through it firsthand. And if that wouldn't work with the timeline established here, it could fit in the second book easily, because without his section, I think there would have actually been more suspense at the end.