Coreen Campos > Recent Status Updates

I like to finish and I have the second book or else I might have quit. With all of that said, I’m about 50% through and while I dislike the characters, the plot is starting to pickup. Unsolved mystery, potential war, people may not be who they say they are. I also love the concept of the school and the zodiac inspired world building with mythical creatures too.

In addition to the lazy character development and cheesy one liners, the culture of the world build is really awful. Another review said “consent is sexy” and I’d have to agree. I’m assuming there’s an attempt to build an enemies to lovers romance or two but there is nonstop assault, bullying, attacks, it’s shocking this was written by woman.

The first third of this book is *really* rough. The writing is cheesy and lazy, I’m SO tired of the “protagonist was in foster care so have compassion for them” trope, written by writers with seemingly no lived experience in foster care and minus the complexities or depth of the topic—not even researched! Additionally the cheesiness “I had to be careful as a precaution” “run like my assholes on fire”

Cringe: “I just had to be fast as a precaution” and yet another main character(s) are foster youth trope.

As someone who experienced foster care and knows quite a number of people who have also experienced foster care, I’m tired of stories that have a troubled villain from foster care or a protagonist that they lazily mention foster care to get an immediate reaction from authors that admittedly have no clue.

Ugh, why didn’t Vianne get the supplies for her friend! She was SO close! This book is so moving yet some of the plot holes really stand out….but it’s well researched, much like The Women, and it’s such a good story. Ugly crying yet again.

Spoiler note:
The situation with Rachel and Sarah just took a HUGE turn. We begin to trust Beck, but the Sarah situation seemed hard to believe—what was the motivation behind the gate disruption…seemed so randomly violent, but I suppose it’s the point. Still had me ugly crying.

I’ve really started to like Cameron now. His life choices really stress me out and being 30 makes me feel less sympathy…but I like how he’s clicked with Tova and his arguably honest self-assessment and hope….and I suspect that he’s really Erik’s son and his mother had some sort of trauma around his loss…or there’s a reason he was kept secret….