After her mother’s tragic and violent death, Mallory was left with a broken heart and a lot of questions. As a freshman theater major at her mother’s alma mater, for the first time she has the chance to search for
answers. After getting the lead role in the department’s production of Romeo & Juliet, Mallory finds an unlikely ally in the magnetic Ezra Pierce, a senior and assistant director who seems to know more than he’s letting on. As they grow closer, Mallory starts to uncover a mystery with its roots centuries back in New England’s haunted past.
Lord, where do I even start. For the record, I’m rounding my rating up to two stars because the book wasn’t outright offensive and I’m sure some people will enjoy it (based on the fairly high average rating when I’m writing this), but for me this was a one-star reading experience. I genuinely did not enjoy a single part of this book except for the cover and fanart the author commissioned, which are lovely but frankly a little misleading. This will be a rant but I’ll try not to go on for too long because I don’t want to waste your time like this book wasted mine.
Starting with the characters and relationships, probably one of the first red flags was how insanely rushed Mallory and Ezra’s relationship development is. They go from complete strangers to sharing their darkest secrets in like three days max. Ironic that the show being put on is Romeo & Juliet, maybe it’s intentional, but it just makes Ezra come off really grossly forward and makes Mallory seem stupid. I guess you’re ultimately not supposed to like Ezra, but I feel like I didn’t like him for the wrong reasons. Every “romantic” thing he said was so cringe-inducing, and he’s so needlessly angsty and intense you can almost forget he’s a whole adult man. That’s another thing, I’m sorry but it does ick me out that Mallory is nineteen and a freshman and Ezra is a senior. Again, I know their relationship is supposed to be icky, but they’re also supposed to be convincingly in love and I just didn’t see it. As another reviewer mentioned, I got the impression from the fanart the author used for marketing that we might get a poly romance or at least a love triangle, but really Mallory just goes from one ridiculous, rushed relationship into another one with Saskia, and they have even less chemistry. Ezra is completely unlikable, but Saskia is just nothing. If you asked me to describe her character I would tell you she has white hair and screams a lot, and that’s about it. Mallory’s relationship with Arden is probably the only one that the author spends any time establishing, only for Arden to just not be involved for 90% of the book.
Writing-wise, again to repeat what another reviewer said, if you take out the smut this reads entirely like YA, and pretty juvenile YA at that because I don’t think YA is inherently poorly-written or dumbed down. That actually makes the smut scenes really uncomfortable, because seeing as all of these characters act like children and the book is written like it’s for children, it feels like you’re reading smut about teenagers and honestly I skipped most of those scenes because I was so grossed out. There’s also so little originality to the writing. There’s a section that says something along the lines of: “Women always have to be everything all at once. Be pretty, but don’t be confident. Be pure, but don’t be a prude. Be sexy, but don’t be a slut.” which is a sentiment I agree with but is such an unoriginal thought that you can probably check my paraphrase against the actual quote and it’ll be almost identical. I guess why convey these ideas through the story or offer a unique perspective when you can just interrupt a character’s internal monologue to explicitly say exactly what dozens of other people have said in the hope that people who agree with you will highlight the line to show their agreement. It’s just lazy and entirely took me out of the story because I was suddenly hearing the author’s voice instead of Mallory’s.
Plot-wise, it was a lot more unoriginal paranormal whatever, lazy horror, and missed opportunities. Oh, there’s a ghost with long black hair in a long white dress covered in blood? And a secret society of men sacrificing women for power? And a coven of girlboss witches who won’t tell the MC anything until it’s time for them to conveniently come in and solve everything with *magic*? Wow, what novelty. I read a lot of horror, and I think a real failure of the horror in this book is that there’s actually zero tension building and nothing is left to the imagination. There’s no creeping dread or slow ramp-up, it’s just right off the bat BLOOD BLOOD MURDER KILL GHOST SCARY, which funnily enough isn’t really scary at all–it’s incredibly tacky. The play also plays (ha) no role in the story. If Mallory was a math major and Ezra was like a TA or something, that wouldn’t really change the story. It feels like a wasted opportunity because the show could introduce all these opportunities for forced proximity or drama or just more scenes of the characters bonding in the way that a cast does, but we don’t really get that.
Two weird plot hole-adjacent things I want to mention, one of which is a spoiler so I’ll cover it but you’ve been warned. The first is that despite being presumable a very good actress (we don’t see her perform on page at all), Mallory is also characterized as being profoundly bad at lying. Maybe those two traits can coexist, but it’s hard to imagine and feels like an oversight. The second is…
SPOILERS AHEAD
Why the hell does Ezra yell “I’m possessed!” only for them to gloss over it, and then later for both characters to act like it didn’t happen? He yells it and there’s no immediate follow up because they’re too busy making out, but then later Mallory sees him literally become a demon and he acts like it’s a secret and she acts like she has no idea what’s going on. Mallory’s like “What’s wrong with him? What is this?”, and girl literally last chapter he yelled “I’m possessed!”, so I have a sneaking suspicion he might be possessed. And Ezra’s being all angsty like “I can’t tell you. I need to protect you.” like my brother in christ you already told her!
I can’t recommend this book because I don’t have anything good to say about it. If you think you’ll like it, maybe you will, but there are plenty of good gothic fantasies out there and I don’t think this is one of them.
Thank you to De Elizabeth and Dutton for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review.
Happy reading!
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