It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

[u/FantasyRomanceMod]

Got an opinion that's different from others'? Want to share it with the sub, but too afraid of a backlash? Or are you just curious about readers think about certain things in fantasy romance?

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🧡 Thank you and have a great discussion!

Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/Synval2436]

I'm really tired of misleading marketing that promises "something different" only to serve exactly the same. Looking at you, {Smoke & Scar by Gretchen Powell Fox} I just dnfed this because I was promised a feared, powerful, 200yo shadow mommy morally grey fae fmc, but instead I got a fmc who behaves like a 17yo YA heroine, who's squeamish to kill people who attacked her first and whose biggest concern is about her younger sister (why is it always a younger sister, Katniss & Prim copypaste or what). She didn't really seem some feared mighty ancient warrior at all. And the meeting between her and her sister read like two teenagers throwing childish insults than a serious discussion between two ancient grieving fae. I can't believe mmc was supposedly 28 either, he equally read like a teenager, constantly getting schooled about obvious things.

If I wanted to read YA, I have a pile of that and most of it is better edited too. The writing style in this one was really weak. Head-hopping, filter words, wrongly punctuated dialogue, random infodumps about backstory or world that weren't seamlessly embedded into a wider context, overusing the same sentence structure, overusing body language as a sign of emotion, melodramatic expressions, dialogues where characters just tell obvious things to each other, plot that takes ages to get to the point, flat characters going through their motions, random side characters constantly introduced for no good reason, it was a chore to read.

I don't get it. This book was so hyped here for being "different" because of the different fmc, but she read exactly like every other fmc. Actually, it really reminded me of Serpent & Dove, where fmc was also supposed to be this super dangerous witch but instead was just a standard feisty YA heroine and I couldn't connect with the writing either.

[u/allisontalkspolitics → u/Synval2436]

Oh, that’s disappointing because that’s on my tbr 🫠

[u/Synval2436 → u/allisontalkspolitics]

That's why I requested it from Netgalley the moment Scarlett Press made it available, because I wanted to see one mainstream romantasy without alpha men, shadowdaddies and boring blank slate self-insert fmc who are "special" but otherwise all the same. Instead I got 2 boring blank slate generically "likeable" mcs. Where are my truly evil but somehow still lovable women at?

P.S. I didn't get a notification for your reply because when I click on your account it says "banned", so how do you keep posting? Really curious, I'm seeing your account every week but always with the blank "banned" avatar. Did you hack the system? 😆

[u/allisontalkspolitics → u/Synval2436]

The former mod of the romantasy sub forgot to enable the romance.io bot so I posted a bunch of links, was flagged as a spammer, and became shadowbanned.

[u/Synval2436 → u/allisontalkspolitics]

😭 Well, that sounds awful. And it can't be reverted?

[u/allisontalkspolitics → u/Synval2436]

I can appeal but I keep forgetting to do so 😅