Disclaimer: This is a review, and as such will contain opinions, spoilers and (often) general shit talking. (If you talk about what you don’t like about a work, you learn a lot. When you think through a work with the stakes presented to you by the creator, by the context of the work, you learn a lot. I review things, not because I love to dislike things, but because dislike contains rich and vital information for the process of experiencing something, but I cannot access it without interrogating it.) So, if you don’t want to have this thing spoiled for you, or don’t know how to behave when a person on the internet, that you don’t know, has opinions that don’t line up with yours, this review is not for you. It’s also not for the author/creator of the work. Please and thank you.
I’m not gonna bother with any kind of summary of this book — and I use that word in its most literal sense that it is a (rather large) grouping of words that have been put together and published — because the plot that you’re served up in the beginning quickly gets dropped like a bag full of kittens into a river.
The writing is like some 16-year-old wrote her first fic on Wattpad (absolutely minimal editing), the pacing is atrocious (gets lost in the woods like a herd of cats), and the story is all over the place with the romance making absolutely no sense.
Okay, so the first question is: why the fuck was I read this shit?
I’m still on the hunt for genuinely dark romance books that I’ll enjoy, and when Alex said this might be it, I found it on sale and went for it. Yes, I spent money on this crap. (No, Alex has not lost her book recommendation privileges because she was making a blind rec, see evidence below.)
My hunt for the dark? So far, not so good. I’ve been disappointed more than not, and have yet to find something genuinely good that is also genuinely dark. Because so far I’m getting a lot of unhinged being passed off as dark, some unironic grooming-adjacent romance and petulance being passed off as a character trait as well as a plot device.
What I like about this book? Corvina is such a cute name for an FMC. That’s it.
In this case, though, the name is only used because iT gIvEs DaRk VibEs, not because the FMC genuinely feels like a Corvina. The MMC calls himself the devil and her little witch, anyway, so her name becomes a bit of a moot point. Neither of them are either of those things, btw. It’s just for the VibEs.
Corvina, unsurprisingly, also makes friends with crows. Now, this endeared her to me, just a little. A smidge. Because people who make friends with crows 🖤🐦⬛ HOWEVER, unsurprisingly also, this whole corvidae theme means that MMC uses another nickname for Corvina that is… can you guess?
Guess. I dare you. Yes, it’s “little crow”. (Still better than “bunny” but that’s not enough to save this book.)
The MMC is yet another dark and moody professor, who’s unreasonably fit and dresses in black jeans, black shirts, black shoes, black everything. Because you can’t be dark and moody unless you dress in black. (Don’t worry about it, all these dark academia love interest professors come from the same factory and they can only afford to make one model because of cost issues.)
The romance follows the exact blueprint you’d expect – brooding academic becomes instantly obsessed with our “she’s not like other girls (based solely on the fact that she is not other girls)” protagonist. (The instant obsession is also a factory default setting in these MMCs that can’t be changed.)
An assortment of things that don’t make sense. (Just like this book.)
The school. It’s a school for adults, but they’re not “allowed to use the phone” to call people. In addition to not being allowed to use THE ONE SINGLE LAND LINE on the premises, they’re also not allowed to leave. Not without special permission. These are legal and functional adults, why can’t they use the phone? Why can’t they go places?
If the author wanted to create that foreboding, isolated feeling, all it takes is a little work. Set the story in the past when technology was more of an issue and instant communication didn’t exist as it does today. Or set it in a parallel universe where technology just doesn’t exist. Or make it constantly break for some plot reason (inexplicable reasons like ghosts, if you want it to be spooky!) and have it always be in a state of disrepair.
The crystals. And as often as crystals get mentioned, I can’t tell if the author is trying to set the mood with the crystals because they thought that crystals and witches (which Corvina still isn’t) somehow go together, or because the author genuinely is really into crystals and is trying to preach their power to other people through this “book”.
The psychology name dropping. Just like there was a hint of a plot at the beginning, the book name drops elements of Jungian psychology like it’s going somewhere with it. It’s not. It’s going absolutely nowhere and we’re getting mention of these things to prove that FMC is “really into books” because she’s “not like other girls”.
The spice. It’s bad, y’all. So, so bad. It’s boring, it’s repetitive, there’s a lot of it. And as I listened to this one, the woman narrator did this book no favours. Her male voice for whenever the MMC was speaking sounded like she was making fun of him, because she dropped into a low, husky register that just made his dialogue sound like a joke.
I mean his dialogue in general was a joke, but the narration just did 👏 not 👏 help 👏 (And I literally mean that the voice she used for MMC’s dialogue is the voice I use to mock middle aged men trying to mansplain periods to me.)
The intimate scenes suffer from some truly baffling word choices and anatomy that defies basic logic. “She was dying to let his taste penetrate her”? No. Just no.
And I absolutely hate it when books refer to women getting wet as “juices”.
Different “juice” I know, but while I’m fine with breast milk and breastfeeding, just the verbiage of “juices” when speaking of women in a sexual context just… eugh.
The writing. Even after this got picked up for trad pub and was given a new shiny AI cover (wtf?), the writing STILL makes no sense. There are insane run on sentences, sentence fragments, words used incorrectly, and I just frowned and cringed and scratched my head right through this whole damn book.
And there was so. Much. Waffling. State a thing, repeat the thing, have dialogue about the thing, mention the thing again.
This book would be considerably shorter with some serious edits because we lose hours of our lives to pages and pages where we can’t just use language to actually say what we mean. The repetitive writing makes every plot point feel like it’s being beaten to death. Oh but also, what plot? There are only plot points but no actually cohesive plot.
Characters also move in space without any kind of mention of it, making it a whiplash-style reading experience where you’re constantly thinking you’re having a stroke because things just show up out of nowhere, words don’t seem to match their dictionary meanings and people, places and things just kind of ✨happen✨.
The character development. (What development?) Most people need to fill silences, but not Corvina. She’s not like other girls. Corvina apparently also exists in an emotional vacuum until this relationship with the professor with a reputation for sleeping with his students awakens feelings in her that no human has ever experienced before. Anger is also a foreign emotion to her, she has never felt anger before (from my reading notes: “But now she’s been triggered — by what, I’m not sure — but she’s not like other girls.”)
She’s also discovering a love of literature because it allows her to be both creative and analytical, psychology is useful sure, but literature is her new love despite having been a canonical lifelong reader.
School is so mind opening (by which I mean she spreads her legs for his monster-sized cock any chance she gets and I have to wonder how he gets around campus with a schlong that long dangling down a pant leg). Oh, wait, maybe it’s because he owns the school and makes the whole faculty obey him out of fear, so no one dares mention the trouser snake.
Corvina actually did say that she’s come to school to be around other people and especially to find a man like in her romance novels. She literally came to university to find her book boyfriend. Points for self-awareness, I guess?
Also, girly waxes herself with her homemade wax, what a trooper, so resourceful. Mhmm, yeah, that was an important detail to know about her.
The MMC is eye fucking FMC every chance he gets. Then gets her alone, by some professorly contrivance or other, only to tell her not to do it to him, or not entice him by just existing. His emotional depth reaches about as far as a teenager’s poetry journal, with him ping-ponging between intense staring and contradictory mixed signals. But it’s okay, because it makes him eDgY and UnPrEdiCtAbLe.
He’s also Deliciously Jealous(TM) because when this girl — who has a history of schizophrenia on both sides of her family and was told by a mental health professional that it’s not a problem, nothing to worry about — has an auditory hallucination during sex (one of them is called Mo), the MMC goes “Who the fuck is Mo?” and immediately assume she’s fucking around.
The third act. The plot we got teased with at the beginning is in a different country by now. We’ve moved on to Other Things. And one of those things is a Third Act Breakup, this time spurred on by “omg did she KNOW this man she loved with her whole being AT ALL?!?” when they’ve known each other for a few months and Corvina conveniently jumps to a bunch of conclusions based on nothing. Maybe the wind.
The ending. In the end it got insanely boring (even more so than before), then it got super cheesy, and for some godsforsaken reason it needed two (2) epilogues.
Oh, no, wait I know why we needed two — even named Epiologue 1 and Epilogue 2 — because while MMC gave her a ‘this is not a proposal ring’ at some point, he finally did marry her and he reversed his vasectomy, so they could solve all their problems by having a family. That’s why we needed two epilogues.
Anyway I got to the end and I’m so fucking done.
This book is shit. The writing is shit. The story is shit. The characterisation is shit. It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on nor the file it was recorded in.
Dark my arse. My conclusion is that this author is laughing all the way to the bank because they’ve gotten so many people to buy this book they landed a (supposedly) six figure publishing deal from a trad publisher.
It’s almost enough to make me wanna quit writing. Well no, it just makes me wanna write my stories even more. But just…
I don’t understand how shit like this has over 60-thousand 4 and 5 star reviews on Goodreads. Final verdict: Goodbye and good riddance. If ever you need fuel for your fireplace, this is it. Or, y’know, just buy the wood. It’s cheaper and more environment friendly than this crap bag of pollution.
“When Sasha Barrett gets bitten by a snake on a mission, her squad captain’s quick actions not only save her life, but also make her realise something she may have known all along…“
Want to get more out of reading books?
Grab this FREE guide on how to start a reading journal, complete with review templates, reading trackers and bingo sheets.
Understand yourself better as a reader, engage more with the books you read & make space for creative self-expression. Get it now!
