Review: Wayward Son (Cat murder, problematic writing, & a well-deserved DNF)

After the bi-erasure extravaganza that was Carry On, I really tried to give Wayward Son a chance.

I actually liked the romance between Simon and Baz in the first book and Baz is my absolute favorite character which is so rare for me. I almost never like main characters the best out of books. I generally gravitate toward side characters, but Rowell makes Penny and Agatha so unlikable (and she kills off Ebb) that I had to like either Simon or Baz and since Baz is sort of awesome, I chose him.

Reading the second book was a mistake. There’s a scene about 2 hours in where Baz kills 9 cats and I had to DNF there. I cannot stand cat murder in books, it’s one of my biggest triggers because my parents used to torture me with it when they were abusing me as a child and I wish I could say I’m surprised RR included it, but I’m not.

I genuinely don’t understand how people even still like her books after all of her problematic storytelling. From Eleanor and Park to Carry On, she’s erasing culture and sexuality and she’s taking up space that would be better suited to own voices authors.

And it’s not like the book was even that good prior to the cat murdering scene, everyone was really whiny and I was trying really hard to get into it, but honestly I couldn’t do it.

I hate DNFing stuff and usually I would post a review without a star rating if I DNF’d something because that’s just common courtesy, but this 1-star was well-deserved.

It’s 2019, it’s time to stop this crap

Review: Not Your Villain by C.B Lee (Audible)

I got this title on audible like I do most of my traditional publishing reads and as much as it pains me because I adored the first one, I’m going to have to DNF book 2.

I love Bells and I would have loved to follow his story especially his whole Chameleon thing, but C.B Lee doesn’t do anything interesting with him. Most of the book he pines over Emma in the most annoying way possible.

Then he whines when she gets a boyfriend and starts acting like a bad friend. Which was so annoying to me and made even more annoying by the voice actor they had reading the book that I had to stop listening.

Not to mention, Lee completely mischaracterizes Jess. It’s like this book was written by a completely different person. In book 1, Jess loved running and training and she wanted to be a hero. In book 2, Jess is a whiny lazy grump who is useless on most missions.

This turned me off so badly because I really genuinely loved Jess and seeing her stripped down to a whiny comic relief archetype was horrible.

You’re better than this, C.B Lee and I really agonized over giving this book a bad review because I loved the first one so much, but I cannot continue to struggle through reading this.

Overall rating: ★
(1/5 Stars – DNF)

Rating breakdown:
Prose: 👍👍
Plot: 😄
Characterization:
Boredom meter:

I really hope the next novel C.B Lee puts out is better than this.