abandon hope. this is pure slop. this is slop’s final form. 

i will fully admit, i did not go into this book with an open mind or pure intentions. i am not a romantasy reader. i only read this because i have never laughed harder at an author’s attempt to market a book on tiktok. the absolute word salad over videos of her crying were genuinely so baffling i had to see what the fuss was about. now that i’ve read it, girl, why the fuck are you crying on god’s internet? i couldn’t even shed a tear of boredom for this trash. 

nothing about this book is redeemable. everything about it is juvenile: the characters, the plot, the romance, the marketing, the humor. 

the characters are all terrible. alexis is someone’s 6th grade self-insert OC. she’s a tortured math genius who is constantly being beaten up, and also has zero deduction skills. it takes 80% of the book to get to the big reveal that she’s hercules which is already included in the book summary, so it was incredibly anticlimactic. alexis is the only idiot who has no idea what’s happening.

the romance? nonexistent. four men who do nothing but rag on alexis all book but also pine incredibly hard for someone they have zero connection to. no one likes each other because they’re all so unlikeable and insufferable. it’s so BORING. even the characters who are established to be together have no chemistry. if you’re hoping for spice, the most you get in the first 95% of the book is nonconsensual nipple play and then one chapter of two men playing dj on her clit, also dubiously consented to. 

the entire book should be a case study on show, don’t tell. all the lore is vomited out in a single chapter. we spend 80% of this book in the academy and it goes nowhere. nothing happens except for like two vaguely threatening notes and both of her professor/love interests being one monologue away from becoming full blown disney villains. 

but by far the thing i hate about this book the most is the “humor”. to call it juvenile would be demeaning to fart jokes. it physically hurts to read some of the repeated jokes that weren’t funny the first time and definitely aren’t the fifth time around. the use of parentheses to clarify the sarcasm is worthy of jail. free the nips and lips? free me, bitch. free me from ever knowing i exist on an earth with this book. 

i get it now, when people say they turn off their brains to read and not think critically about the media they engage with. i get it. if i could shut my brain off and find this enjoyable, i would fire my therapist. honestly if this is the state of romantasy and booktok, do me a favor, take me out back and old yeller me.