Review of Charming Devil by Rebecca Kenney

My Rating: 2.25 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free e-galley through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

CWs: lots of violence, sex, anything with dark romance, mentions of parental death, gruesome, bloody death, body horror, homophobia/biphobia (on page and in characterization).

So, I will give credit in this having a male character who is shown to have sexual attraction to multiple genders. As well as the FMC. However, the good part ends there, in the same breath, Dorian is promiscuous and flagrant with his partners, until super-special-FMC of course. I’m not against sex at all, but to have promiscuity in a bisexual character kind of fulfills a negative stereotype about queer people, especially bisexual and pansexual people. And Baz’s bisexuality is pretty minuscule and offhandedly mentioned. I don’t think she needs to date women on page, or at all, to be queer, but this is just felt tacked on and half-assed/

The writing was very readable/consumable, but Anne Rice and Rachel Harrison are two examples off the top of my head that write the same atmosphere but with better representation and more bearable characters.

This book wasn’t awful, or the worst book I’ve read (that honor belongs to the Scarlett Letter) but it isn’t the best, far from it. I wouldn’t have continued this book except well, it’s kind of like really trashy reality TV. It’s fun to read.

Dorian’s an ass, Baz is very NLOG/pick me coded. She reminds me of someone who would roll her eyes every time she sees teenagers squealing over One Direction, she just comes off as holier-than-thou to me. Dorian comes off as the guy who thinks every woman in the room wants to be with him (within the first few chapters, this guy hounds Baz for a date, and when she turns him down, he just says “see you at seven!”).

Maybe it’s a genre thing, dark romance really isn’t my thing, I prefer cuter things and I think this really fits the dark romance genre really well. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, it’s just not to my taste. For people who like that genre, this book is perfect.

The plot and magic system isn’t generic at all, it’s inventive, not totally unique but pretty inventive. In its outline, it’s good, but it just fell to too many clichés for me. I didn’t like it.