spoiler visualizarAmanda2514 04/01/2024
Quick impressions after finishing it
It was getting pretty interesting until the scene where Zade "finally" shows himself. From that on, it started feeling more and more like an edgy wattpad romance.
The main couple dinamic progressively grows more generic as Adeline starts catching feelings for him, but the other 2 plots in the story make it worth the read (the investigation of her grand-grandmother assassination and Zade's investigation on the cult).
It wouldn't make sense complaining about the book touching heavy and triggering topics, considering it warns the reader from the beginning, but what really bothers me is that Zade hypocrisy and doublethink is simply never explained, it was badly constructed. How can he do something that resembles what the men he hates do? And not think anything of that? There's no problem having an evil, hypocritical character, but the narration seems to want to paint him as a completely good man with justifiable doing, and that doesn't come only from Adeline internal monolog, she could rightfully be broken minded by his actions, but even Daya also seem to automatically adhere to black and white mentality when she finds out he is Z. The book seems to try and justify his actions, never pointing at or hinting on how he's actually not a good person, even if he does something good to women by fighting against sexual trafficking. Yes, I know he himself says things like "I'm not a good man", but the narrative seems to try and paint him as if he were, "despite" stalking, assaulting and molesting Adeline. Summarizing: the main problem is that Zade's hypocrisy and doublethink wasn't well constructed, instead, the narrative seems to try convincing the reader he's actually a good person after all.