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Book Review: One Cursed Rose & One Dark Kiss, by Rebecca Zanetti

I purchased a copy of Rebecca Zanetti‘s One Cursed Rose (book 1) after I won a copy of One Dark Kiss (book 2). They do have pretty covers.

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One Cursed Rose: 

They christened me Alana—and while the name means beauty, beneath that surface is a depth I allow very few to see. I’m sole heir to Aquarius Social, a media giant about to succumb to an unseen enemy. My father’s solution is to marry me off to the son of a competing family. My reaction? Not a chance. Now I have just a week before the wedding to change my fate.

Who knew the unforeseen twist would be an assassination attempt on me and an unwanted rescue by Thorn Beathach, the head of the rival social media empire driving Aquarius under? The richest, most ruthless of them all, the Beast protects his realm with an iron rule: no one sees his face. When he shows himself to me, I know he’ll never let me go.

Thorn may think he can lock me in his enchanted castle forever, but I’m not the docile Beauty he expects. If the Beast wants to tie me up, I’m going to take pleasure from every minute of it …and we’ll just see who ends up shackled.

MY REVIEW:

I don’t think Zanetti is the author for me. Which is a shame; I’ve one more of her books that I’ve committed to reading (if only to myself). When I picked this up, I didn’t realize I had read a book by Zanetti about five years ago. I just went back and read that review. It says:

Honestly, I thought this was pretty bad. The plot has too many holes in it. The heroine is spineless, and the hero is a neanderthal jerk. (I can handle an alpha a-hole hero in a paranormal romance, where being a werewolf or vampire or sea monster explains away the assholeness. But in a plain old human, he just feels abusive.) The sex wasn’t sexy, being of the no foreplay, “he pounded/hammered/slammed into her” sort. The science was handwavey. And the whole thing just felt ridiculous. But hey, I do an alphabet challenge every year, and I always struggle to find a Z-author. Now I have.

With the exception that this theoretically has magic in it and the FMC isn’t spineless, this review of Scorpius Rising could also apply to One Cursed Rose. I recently saw someone else say morally grey male characters in this sort of book are supposed to do bad things for her, not bad things to her. I’m not sure that holds true all the time (dark romance can be very dark at times), but I think it would be the case for this book. This isn’t a particularly dark romance, but there’s nothing about the FMC and MMC’s interactions that leads the reader to believe love should develop between them. He’s a “a neanderthal jerk” who “pounded/hammered/slammed into her” and did little else beyond spout obsessive “You’re mine” BS. However, his obsession begins before the book and is never fully explained. So, it too feels unsupported and unbelievable.

This is a problem because the entire plot of the book hinges on his obsession with her. It’s why he’s so protective, possessive, and lusty. He spends the entire book giving her rules and punishing her if she breaks them (some feeling very abusive, even if—maybe especially since—it’s in sex-play), telling her what to do and expecting obedience, and making demands on her agency that amount to literal ownership. All wrapped up in ‘romance.’ Lately, I’ve been dancing with the idea of calling this “fundamentalist fiction.” Because it 100% lines up with Christian fundamentalism’s idea of male headship and female submission to their male partner. If the stories we read are meant to support and undergird society’s cultural norms, this one absolutely aligns with a Christian fundamentalist world-view. He has absolute power and control, including the right to hurt her and have her thank him for it.

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One Dark Kiss:

ALEXEI
I’ve spent the last seven years in the hell of a maximum-security prison, every moment consumed by the need for revenge—revenge against the bastards who framed me, and revenge against the family who stole everything I owned. Now that I’m finally free, nothing will stand in my way. Not even her—my hot as sin new lawyer. Maybe she’s another weapon sent by my enemies to break me, or maybe she’s the key to my freedom. Either way, once she’s mine, I’m never letting her go.

ROSALIE
When I took this case, I thought I had it under control. But Alexei is no typical convicted killer—he’s a dangerously seductive force of nature. Perhaps it’s the lingering power from his days as heir to a global social media empire. Innocent or not, he’s dangerous in the worst and best ways.

I secure Alexei’s release as we prepare for a new trial, but he wastes no time turning against his traitorous relatives and plotting his return to power. Amidst the chaos, our explosive chemistry ignites, putting us—and everyone I care about—in the crosshairs of ruthless enemies. If we can’t stop them, Alexei plans to burn the whole world down. And if anything, he’s a man of his word…

MY REVIEW:

I said in the review of book one that I’d recently heard someone say “morally grey male characters in this sort of book are supposed to do bad things for her, not bad things to her. I’m not sure that holds true all the time (dark romance can be very dark at times), but I think it would be the case for this book.” I hadn’t yet figured out how to articulate why the morally grey characters felt so off in Zanetti’s books. I have now.

In a completely unrelated event, I saw a TikTok a few days back that discussed dark fiction on a spectrum from light to pitch black. While where the line is drawn is up for debate, for the sake of my point, I’ll use their scale. They broke it down like this: Diet (or light) Dark Romane is when a book has dark themes, but the characters are not bad people. Standard Dark Romance is about good people who do morally grey things that can be justified (like killing bad people), but they love each other fiercely. Pitch Black Romance is where all morals are gone, one of them (and it’s usually the male) does bad things and is a bad person, but is obsessed with their romantic partner.

Zanetti writes standard dark romance that leans toward diet even, and then tries to put a pitch black male romantic lead in it. The reader is told again and again how dark and moralless he is, but then every one we see him kill happens to be pimping kids or beating women or a rapist. They lead various organized crime families (the social media empires are just a euphemism for the Mob and Bratva) but refuse to traffic women or kids, institute moral limits within their organizations, and are basically Standard Dark Romance men. He’s not really a pitch-black MMC, even though Zanetti tries to convince us he is.

The problems come in when he interacts with the FMC because he acts in a Dark Romance way with her. Without the architecture of pitch black romance in the rest of the book, the domineering way he acts with her feels out of place and flatly abusive, like his abusive persona only comes out at home. Hell, the MMC straight-up SAs the FMC in this book, and there is nothing in the rest of the book to give it the patina of consensual non-consent. She’s unconscious when he starts, and then when she wakes, she tells him no repeatedly. After the fact, she states he forced it on her. It’s SA, and the book lacks the pitch blackness to contextualize it as anything else or successfully convince the reader that it’s really what the FMC wanted. So, the male leads in both books in this series, but especially in this one, simply feel extremely domestically controlling and abusive, and there is nothing sexy about it. Some extremely dark romances, especially those leaning toward horror, pull it off. Zanetti’s books do not. They don’t even come close. You simply can’t have a male romantic lead that is abusive toward her, but working with a moral compass with everything else, and not have it feel like your standard contemporary domestic abuser. Throw in all the stuff about ownership and possession, and you have your misogynist, too.

Plus, on a separate point, when you really break the books down. Books one and two are basically the exact same book. So, even when reading the two back to back, you feel the formulaic nature. I can’t imagine I’ll read another Zanetti book.


Other Reviews:

Ebook Obsessed: Grimm Bargains

Fiction Addictions: One Dark Kiss

 

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Book Review: Murder in Highbury, by Vanessa Kelly

A copy of Vanessa Kelly‘s Murder in Highbury showed up in the mail one day from Between the Chapters. I think I must have won it, but I was never quite sure how. LOL

murder in highbury cover

Less than one year into her marriage to respected magistrate George Knightley, Emma has grown unusually content in her newfound partnership and refreshed sense of independence. The height of summer sees the former Miss Woodhouse gracefully balancing the meticulous management of her elegant family estate and a flurry of social engagements, with few worries apart from her beloved father’s health . . .  

But cheery circumstances change in an instant when Emma and Harriet Martin, now the wife of one of Mr. Knightley’s tenant farmers, discover a hideous shock at the local church. The corpse of Mrs. Augusta Elton, the vicar’s wife, has been discarded on the altar steps—the ornate necklace she often wore stripped from her neck . . .  

As a chilling murder mystery blooms and chaos descends upon the tranquil village of Highbury, the question isn’t simply who committed the crime, but who wasn’t secretly wishing for the unpleasant woman’s demise. When suspicions suddenly fall on a harmless local, Emma—armed with wit, unwavering determination, and extensive social connections—realizes she must discreetly navigate an investigation of her own to protect the innocent and expose the ruthless culprit hiding in plain sight.

my review

Meh. This was okay, but I was bored with a lot of it, especially in the beginning, which I found really repetitive. Things happen, and then the reader sits through the event being relayed several times. Plus, I guessed the murderer quite early. What saved this from being a total flop for me was the interactions between Emma and George. It’s very sweet. And though the book’s romance is closed-door, I found it endearing that the reader is in on the closing of that door. All in all, this isn’t a real winner for me, but it’s not horrid either.


Other Reviews:

Reading is My Superpower: Book Review Murder in Highbury

 

 

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Book Review: Her Soul to Take, by Harley Laroux

I purchased a copy of Her Soul to Take by Harley Laroux.

Her Soul to Take cover

Leon
I earned my reputation among magicians for a reason: one wrong move and you’re dead. Killer, they called me, and killing is what I’m best at. Except her. The one I was supposed to take, the one I should have killed – I didn’t. The cult that once controlled me wants her, and I’m not about to lose my new toy to them.

Rae
I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Hunting for ghosts is my passion, but summoning a demon was never part of the plan. Monsters are roaming the woods, and something ancient – something evil – is waking up and calling my name. I don’t know who I can trust, or how deep this darkness goes. All I know is my one shot at survival is the demon stalking me, and he doesn’t just want my body – he wants my soul.

my review

I bought this before getting stuck in an airport with a significantly delayed flight. Which means I read most of it in one sitting. It served its purpose well on that front. It kept me amused. (Hope the people sitting to my left/right weren’t too shocked reading over my shoulder.)

I’ll fully admit the whole S&M kink isn’t one I particularly gravitate toward (I’m just a little too attuned to sex scenes that tread too close to gendered abuse in today’s climate.), and the ‘love’ here is expressed mostly through sex rather than any meaningful conversation or relationship building. But I did feel the author at least made the kink fit (Often, you can feel that the writer only included one or another kink because it’s on trend.), and the heroine was unabashedly into what she was into. So, there didn’t need to be the dreaded training scenes. (God, I’ve read so many training scenes. How different can any author really make them? I’m so entirely bored by them.) So, even if not a favorite, I felt the power dynamic and use of S&M worked here.

What I am into is a desperately obsessive, he-falls-first male lead. Leon is a demon, and the obsessive way he hyper-fixates on Rae feels like hedonistic, demonic behavior. It fits. It’s a weak basis for a romance, but it’s a strong base for why a historically murderous demon doesn’t murder one particular woman and protects her instead. A reader does just have to take it on romance-trope-faith that he is being legitimate and not simply enacting a deception in order to steal her soul, which, outside of romance-trope-faith, is the far more likely reality of the scenario presented in the story. Honestly, this little niggle always lurked in the back of my mind as I read. But I am as familiar with romance-trope-faith as any other romance reader. So, I persevered and overcame.

Rae (or Velma, as many other reviewers have called her, and they are right to do so) is likable enough. She’s not particularly smart about some things, but she’s also not TSTL either. Leon Her_Soul_to_take_photowas the real shining star for me, but Rae gave him enough reflective light to do so.

I also really enjoyed the Lovecraftian horror aspect of the plot. The solution was fairly obvious, the human villains were a little cliched, and the fact that their demise happened off-page (obviously enacted by the characters and likily the plot of the next book), felt jarringly anti-climactice. Overall, however, I’ll be reading that next book and will happily seek out more of Laroux’s writing.


Other Reviews:

Her Soul To Take | Review

Review | Her Soul To Take