One Night in Garoureve

When an author touts her own book as “fat girl getting railed” it's a massive disappointment when that fat girl spends the whole book being so unhappy with herself. She's every fat protagonist of every fat girl romance: she has no friends, the people in her life keep her around so she can be the one who stands there being fat so they feel better that they aren't as fat as she is... it's nice to see endo rep but when it doesn't really affect anything about the plot it feels shallow. This man had his pick of women to choose as a mate and her endo should have had some weight there, because it can and does have an effect on fertility, but the author whiffed it.

The smut scenes are honestly overlong and uninteresting. I love a good smut scene, and I love a protracted one if it feels earned. But I found myself skimming the smut, which to me is the death knell on a supposedly erotic story. There was a distinct whiff of “this person came from fanfiction and wasn't interested in learning how to polish their smut for publication” to it. I read a ton of both fic and romance, there IS a difference-namely that the published authors who are good at this have learned to evoke intense sexuality and emotion with an economy of words. That's not to say you can't have a long smut scene, but if it's going to be long, it had better be phenomenal.

This is evidently the beginning of a series... but based on this, I won't be bothering with Elle M. Drew again.