Summary
My fairy tale turned into a cautionary one.
Inked in tar and sealed in tears.
It was supposed to be a harmless kiss at a lavish debutante ball.
A clandestine moment with a handsome stranger.
But unlike his namesake, my Romeo isn’t driven by love.
He’s fueled by revenge.
To him, I’m a chess piece. Leverage.
His rival’s betrothed.
To me, he is a man deserving of poison.
A dark prince I refuse to marry.
He thinks I’ll accept my fate.
Well, I plan to rewrite it.
And in my story, Juliet doesn’t die.
But Romeo? He perishes.
Review
I can’t say I’m disappointed, because I loved this book too much–even though I’m aware of its flaws. But it lost its fifth star at around 80% of its pages and never recovered. I won’t spoil anything, don’t worry.
First of all, it’s an enemies to lovers romance. In fact, I haven’t seen enemies enemying that hard before. It gives the story its energy, its pace, and the most delectable banter I’ve ever read. Dallas and Romeo are witty and don’t mince words. Which at times was out of character for either of them. But I don’t mind a slight lack of consistency if it brings that kind of fun writing. Also, it makes the characters look childish, but whatever.
As a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, it wasn’t half bad. It’s a modern version, with interesting changes in the side characters and the overall plot, while keeping the core of the story: how the main female character sees past the Beast’s ugly facade to find the loving man behind.
The world they live in isn’t exactly dark, but it isn’t rainbow and sunshine either. The people around them are all on a spectrum between flawed and vile, the only light coming from their relationship. And it takes a long time before that light is even visible to the naked eye. To use a floral image–which seems fitting, considering the role of the rose–Dallas and Romeo’s love story is a snowdrop, fighting hard through mud and cold to bloom.
It’s the switch between enemies and lovers that was more challenging. Their relationship stalls for a long time, with little to no evolution, and then, suddenly, there’s unconditional love and devotion. I’d have loved a more subtle change, to be honest. In the meantime, though there’s little love, there’s a ton of attraction. This book has some serious sexy bits. Some of them quite weird, but I’ll let you judge.
For the relationship to change, Dallas has to learn who Romeo is exactly, and understand how he came to be and do as he does. She slowly crumbles his walls and digs into his past. And that’s where the book lost me a little. The final revelation, the last secret Romeo keeps, was way too over the top for me. It wasn’t even remotely consistent with the mood of the story, and was mostly for shock value, in my opinion. It took me out of the book, and though I didn’t have to fight hard to keep reading, I still lost a bit of interest.
Maybe, like poetry, this book has more value for its words and its atmosphere, than for the story it tells.
Quickie
- Series: standalone
- Hashtags: #billionaire romance #arranged marriage #enemies to lovers #age gap #virgin
- Triggers: violence, mention of abuse, cheating
- Main couple: Dallas Townsend & Romeo Costa
- Hotness: 4/5
- Romance: 4/5
- + the banter was delectable
- – I’m pretty sure some of the sexy scenes can’t happen in real life…
Stalker mode
You can subscribe to Parker S Huntington’s newsletter on her website and to LJ Shen’s on hers.
You can also follow them on Facebook respectively here and here.
Vero Ticker 