manas (NEW YEAR) 's Reviews > Quicksilver

➳ acotar from temu ☆

ugh. i am gonna be super mean here, so don't take ANY of this seriously. i know nothing about this author and i am very happy for everyone that enjoyed it. as always, i have to give a major shout out to my favorite bestie, vee! the only reason i didn't completely lose my mind is thanks to our shit talking. i love you! lastly, a big shout out to my girlie, adrianna. thank you so much for gifting this book to me. i love and miss you very much. i will pick this up + read this when i am out of my slump, which this book caused LMFAO.

goddamn. time of death page 330.

i just can't do this right now. this book is truly a hawt mess. i have no idea why romance authors turned to romantasy but it's just not working. for starters, i really tried to enjoy this book so i don’t want people thinking that i’m just being a hater about this. everything from the lack of world building and the uneventful magic system make little to no sense. surprisingly, this isn’t even the worst part of this book, because all of these issues lie with our two main characters; kingfisher & saeris. when i tell you—these are two of the worst characters i’ve ever had that displeasure of reading about…i’m not even kidding.

starting with the obvious, i tried to understand the story and the objective as to what we as readers are supposed to gather from this book, but unfortunately, none of the information was found in this book. i do hate myself sometimes, but this was truly one of those books where i just couldn’t keep reading right now. i do you intend to pick this up eventually, but right now i just cannot be bothered to be doing all of that. when i tell you, this put me in one of the worst reading slumps…i am hella behind on my current reads. i’m very wary of books that copy premises from other books and like to paint it off as “inspired by”, since this usually means we’re getting a very watered down, lukewarm version of an already copied story. the audiobook is the only positive thing i can say about the story, because everything else felt either completely flat or was just nonexistent.

one of the most jarring portions of this book is definitely our male main character—who is quite literally every porn stars username. kingfisher??? is the definition of rage bait incel meets frat bros from midtown atlanta. i’m so beyond baffled that this man is not only over 100 years old, but he is over 1000 years old. i know you’re fucking lying??? typically when it comes to these bizarre age gap romances in a fantasy setting, i am very used to the stereotypical plot device devices that are used. HOWEVER, i’m not quite sure what’s going on with this one, but nothing was believable or relevant enough for me to care. this in turn made the romance completely useless in my opinion, and only dragged the story negatively.

speaking of the main character…saeris might be more stupid than kingfisher. apparently this absolute moron is around 24 years old, which is around my age…so color me surprised when she acts even more stupid than a two-year-old BABY. i know i’m going to get hate for this because people always tell me that i’m expecting intellectualism and classic literature when i pick these books up. not only could that not be further from the truth, but fantasy books that have a heavy romantic plot can be well written. THIS, unfortunately, is not one of those books. this all really does come down to personal prerogative—since i cannot tell someone what they can or cannot like. saeris has no competent relevant characteristics that set her apart from any of the other characters. almost every single male character and every single female character, were the exact same archetype with different names. if this were written in third person, i literally would not be able to differ initiate any of the characters.

in my opinion, though, this book reads even worse than a first draft due to how many errors i found. at no point was this relationship developing with the story or was it furthering the plot. all in all, either the fantasy portion of this should’ve been strong or the romance portion of this should’ve been compelling. ultimately, neither of those things were happening, and the only real plot progression was her deciding whether or not she wanted to fuck this man after one interaction where he literally behaved like a five-year-old—trying to bully her. obviously miss girl went along with it and folded within two seconds, embarrassing herself every other second. i’m all for smut and romantic development between fantasy characters in these settings, but the sex cannot be the driving factor. they had their first kiss around the 200 page mark, and i assumed we were either in a dream or this was some premonition that our character was having moving forward. but no. this was all taking place in present time and probably the worst aspect of this is how everything is in first person perspective…which in my humble opinion, never works in fantasy and dystopian books.

i try not to get influenced by other people, but in this case, most of my friends loved this book. i do feel bad for writing a negative review since most people enjoyed it, but i also don’t want to lie or feel the need to fake how i felt. if i’m going to speak about actual issues as to why this book fell completely flat for me; a lot of my issues would come down to personal preference. the insta love and obsession was downright corny and made little to no sense given the context of this plot, coupled with all of the unnecessary male drama that our female main character brought into this very “high stakes” situation—read more like a soap opera than a fantasy novel. at no point in the story did we as readers—ever understand the objective for why they were together, what they were trying to fight, and who the creator enemy was. acotar was very evidently sewn throughout the pages of this book, and even though feyre + rhys are not my favorites, i can appreciate them so much more after reading a water down walmart version of their story. i strongly believe that romance authors can write compelling stories and not everybody needs to turn everything into a magical fae plot just to have crazy smut scenes.

just a fucking mess, i’m sorry.

i’ll definitely do my best to pick this up before the year ends, because the second book was already pre-ordered long before this. this book was gifted to me and i do feel like i have to do some justice to my bestie for that. if you have read the second one, what do we think? how do we like it?