Something Wicked (Idle Reputations Book 1)
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I admit, I’m also one of the people who was drawn to this book because of the cover and then got excited after reading what it’s about. Who wouldn’t want to read a book that is described as “seductive and hypnotic tale of sex, love, and murder”. The question here is: did “Something Wicked” deliver what that tagline promises? For me, it didn’t. While I can see the Moulin Rouge vibe, everything else didn’t do it for me. I loved La Puissance, the fanciest sex club in the kingdom, as a setting! There was sooooo much potential to utilize the club and the people that work there and I can only guess on why the author didn’t use the club in that way. The writing was good. Extremely pleasant to read actually, though I have to say it was giving me contemporary romance vibes for the majority of the book. There is no amount of “your highness” or “my lady” that could make me think otherwise. However, and I hate to be this person, the more the book progresses, the more the general tone, mainly in Cate’s chapters, sounds like YA. This is extremely noticeable in the moments where she tries to advocate for herself as well as when she argues with other people. My main issue with the book is that absolutely everything is being treated on a surface level. The plot, the characters, the mystery (if you want to call it that), the relationships and the development of them. There was not only a solid main plot, but also good subplots for both main characters, yet neither of those things got enough room in this novel to get further explored. In the beginning of the book, Callum, the kinda-heir, is very firm in his dislike & distrust towards the Gifted (people with magic) and the whole Uprising movement, yet even after repeated discussions with his family about this topic, it took him sobbing through two pages of his mother’s diary to have a very sudden change of heart: he realises that *not all* Gifted are bad and they do actually deserve rights...one might think a certain courtesan also played a part in his decision. Which now leads me to my next point: Cate & Callum’s relationship -> Unbelievable to no end. I think this is the first book I have encountered where I understand the term “insta-love”, because what was that?! They meet for the first time, barely talk two sentences and then meet again after two weeks, spend a couple of hours over the course of three or four days and have this bond, the trust and apparently this deep love for each other. It doesn’t make sense. And it’s not making more sense, if you consider the “why” of their feelings. It’s too fast. Too intense. And with barely, if any, chemistry. A lot of this supposed relationship is based on physicality and I think I could have looked past this, if the rest of the book would have been more convincing. Harold, the owner of La Puissance & Cate’s father figure, is someone I had trouble to properly grasp. Cate talks very lovingly of him, but that’s not adding up to the Harold we meet in the book. His relationship with Lady M (yes, that’s how she is referred to and no, at some point I couldn’t take her seriously anymore because of this), had a very strange power dynamic, which I still can’t really understand, nor do I think it made sense in the world and how their relationship is being described as. Most of the chapters have a small diary entry or some announcement or a letter at the end from different characters, which give a little more context to certain scenes and characters, but ultimately, I don’t think they particularly do much for the book. Somewhere in the second half I noticed I seem to lose interest the more the story progressed. Maybe I didn’t get the book and tried to take it as something that it isn’t? No idea. Will I be reading the sequel? Not sure yet. I’m currently leaning towards “no”, though I do think I need to let it sink in for a while. I also have a couple of the author’s romances on my tbr. I will definitely give those a go. Thank you to the Headline Eternal for providing this book for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Book Information
Posts
I admit, I’m also one of the people who was drawn to this book because of the cover and then got excited after reading what it’s about. Who wouldn’t want to read a book that is described as “seductive and hypnotic tale of sex, love, and murder”. The question here is: did “Something Wicked” deliver what that tagline promises? For me, it didn’t. While I can see the Moulin Rouge vibe, everything else didn’t do it for me. I loved La Puissance, the fanciest sex club in the kingdom, as a setting! There was sooooo much potential to utilize the club and the people that work there and I can only guess on why the author didn’t use the club in that way. The writing was good. Extremely pleasant to read actually, though I have to say it was giving me contemporary romance vibes for the majority of the book. There is no amount of “your highness” or “my lady” that could make me think otherwise. However, and I hate to be this person, the more the book progresses, the more the general tone, mainly in Cate’s chapters, sounds like YA. This is extremely noticeable in the moments where she tries to advocate for herself as well as when she argues with other people. My main issue with the book is that absolutely everything is being treated on a surface level. The plot, the characters, the mystery (if you want to call it that), the relationships and the development of them. There was not only a solid main plot, but also good subplots for both main characters, yet neither of those things got enough room in this novel to get further explored. In the beginning of the book, Callum, the kinda-heir, is very firm in his dislike & distrust towards the Gifted (people with magic) and the whole Uprising movement, yet even after repeated discussions with his family about this topic, it took him sobbing through two pages of his mother’s diary to have a very sudden change of heart: he realises that *not all* Gifted are bad and they do actually deserve rights...one might think a certain courtesan also played a part in his decision. Which now leads me to my next point: Cate & Callum’s relationship -> Unbelievable to no end. I think this is the first book I have encountered where I understand the term “insta-love”, because what was that?! They meet for the first time, barely talk two sentences and then meet again after two weeks, spend a couple of hours over the course of three or four days and have this bond, the trust and apparently this deep love for each other. It doesn’t make sense. And it’s not making more sense, if you consider the “why” of their feelings. It’s too fast. Too intense. And with barely, if any, chemistry. A lot of this supposed relationship is based on physicality and I think I could have looked past this, if the rest of the book would have been more convincing. Harold, the owner of La Puissance & Cate’s father figure, is someone I had trouble to properly grasp. Cate talks very lovingly of him, but that’s not adding up to the Harold we meet in the book. His relationship with Lady M (yes, that’s how she is referred to and no, at some point I couldn’t take her seriously anymore because of this), had a very strange power dynamic, which I still can’t really understand, nor do I think it made sense in the world and how their relationship is being described as. Most of the chapters have a small diary entry or some announcement or a letter at the end from different characters, which give a little more context to certain scenes and characters, but ultimately, I don’t think they particularly do much for the book. Somewhere in the second half I noticed I seem to lose interest the more the story progressed. Maybe I didn’t get the book and tried to take it as something that it isn’t? No idea. Will I be reading the sequel? Not sure yet. I’m currently leaning towards “no”, though I do think I need to let it sink in for a while. I also have a couple of the author’s romances on my tbr. I will definitely give those a go. Thank you to the Headline Eternal for providing this book for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.