How Does It Feel?

I did not see what everyone else saw and all I got to ask is are you people okay?? Like seriously check in with yourself? This book was not my cup of tea. First of all degradation of women in this book was so flagrant early on. And it was so boring for like the first 40 percent of the book at least. Then it was really gross, I did not check triggers for this and I highly suggest you do. Then I feel like the author stuffed the last chapter of the book with things that she laid zero groundwork for. Like it did not align with the book at all. Also this is not for the people who liked ACOTAR or SJM or typically Romantasy at all, this was no plot and just smut and pain, not in the fun way either.

But I guess read if you like: enemies to lovers, pain w pleasure, touch her and die, haunting Adeline vibes(I haven't read book just what i know from tiktok) and plot twists

Check official warnings but from what I remember: sexual assault, blood, on screen deaths, acts of violence, descriptions of mutilations

Where do I start? This book was utterly disappointing and I DNFed at 70%. Could I have battle through? Yes but after seeing the utter disgust for the plot twist with people who have the same thoughts at me, I made the decision to happily DNF.

I was excited for this book but in no way did this book succeed at anything remotely good. The character development was shallow, to be nice. The characters were the epitome of good girl who isn't like other girls and the man is simply a villain? dark hair and blue eyes that you can't forget about because you are reminded every seen he is in. Our FMC personality is inconsistent in every way and now thinking about it so is our MMCs.

The pacing was tragic, we spent months searching for something in the human world and two weeks in the fae realm and we are in love? The plot packed all depth and it felt things were through in simply for creating a book, zero connection to past instances or any basis for what was happening.

The background knowledge we get is nonexistent. Here's a list of things that are not explained by the 70%: the magic system, the political system, the generic layout of the fae realm, who Eli is (aka who propelled our FMC entire obsession with winged creation which is the ENTIRE STORY), and the differences between magical creatures. To put this into perspective, fae were described as have pointy ears until 60% in...

I unfortunately bought the physical book but was also reading on KU. The formatting in KU was undoubtedly fucked. Dashes in places were they should and weird additions not found in the physical copy.

Save your time and money please.

How does it feel was... well honestly, I don't know how I feel.

I read it in a day, and while it was a quick interesting read, there were many parts I didn't like.

The FMC Callie was not my favorite. She was very much a 'pick me, i'm not like other girls' character, and was written to have no friends, be a real life barbie with blonde hair, perfect figure and short (and have it mentioned like 20 times) and doesn't cuss, but is a very intelligent scientist. Idk, I don't like the vibes of everyone loving her, like a snow white situation, it was giving special snowflake... and turned me off of her as a character. To add to this, her weird story about some professor who belittled her, then asked her out, and then she was offered his job right after? Idk, it didn't make sense. Also, she was tortured and imprisoned by the MC and then still was into him? I do not understand.

Then we have the MMC who is trying to kill her, imprisons her with a weird creature who tries to r*pe and SA her, and who gets off on her fears while hurting her. He avoids her for the whole time and then suddenly is deeply in love with her after like 1 conversation.. Idk, I didn't like that either. Sure he was hot, but no intelligent woman is going to fall for a man like that, i'm sorry. He is not a Rhys in acotar situation, he is 1000x worse.

The trial thing was similar to the acotar trial but also totally different. It was not particularly original, but it was interesting to read. I didn't love the romance portion, again, it didn't make any sense to me at all and went from 0-100 so fast I was confused.

Finally, the ending. I HATED the twist. I did not like it, and it didn't make sense for the story being from her POV. It was too much of a twist to be plausible and just information withheld from the reader. I honestly felt betrayed as the reader and I did not like it. It was weird and out of the blue and felt like a different plot line, but it didn't fit into this book.

While I am writing this review I have already read the second one and it got even worse... so that's great.

Overall, I think this just was not for me. I didn't love it. It had potential and I idea was super interesting, but it was not for me.