A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair

Romance. Mythology. Urban Fantasy. 

Rating: 1.5/5

Started: 6 March 2022

Finished: 10 March 2022

Summary:

    Persephone just wants to make the most of her temporary freedom from her mother--she's taking classes at the university, has an journalism internship, and lives with an amazing roommate. Her mother keeps tabs on her, sure, but for the first time in her life, she's living in the real world. Then she accidentally makes a bargain with Hades. Though she knows her mother can never find out, she decides to make the best of it, and begins to write a series of articles on the god. But the more time Persephone spends with Hades, the more she realizes that he's not as bad as he seemed. And she begins to fall for him.

Thoughts:

    This book was so lazy. Yes, it was bad in a whole bunch of ways, but more than anything, it was lazy. I've seen the Persephone-Hades retelling go well. Neon Gods by Katee Roberts, for example, was great. But A Touch of Darkness was not. Without the structure of Greek mythology and the Hades-Persephone relationship, this book would have fallen to pieces. 

    There was zero character development for anyone, and zero consistency in reactions and attitudes. It was so frustrating, because the plot was actually okay, and if the characters had been rounded and person-like, the book might have been solidly good. But they weren't, and I can only read about a female protagonist getting scared by a mean  man, crying into her boyfriends broad shoulder, realizing she's mad at said boyfriend for using her as a pawn, shouting at him, and then crying into his shoulder again. It was so frustrating to see a character, who had magic and could have been badass, fit into the stereotype of feminine weakness so easily. This is a book written by a woman. I'm disappointed in the author, to be honest. 

    Hades was also such a dry character. He could have had an arc of character or personality improvement, or there could have been a "surprise, I'm secretly good" moment, but there were just a bunch of half-hearted attempts at both that were over too quickly to make any impact in the story. 

    The writing of the book, too, was not good, and I think this impacted the character development a lot. There was a really weird pacing to the words, and to the scenes, that made any sort of linear development impossible, or at least broke it up too much for the reader to be able to follow it. The pacing felt stilted and jolty. I did read the book fast, because I was annoyed with it and wanted it to be over, but I think the pacing would have been weird regardless. 

    I had heard such good things about this book. I opened it with confidence that it would be at about the same level as Jennifer L. Armentrout books. When I finished the first page, though, I kind of realized that this book was going to be much worse. It just felt off. Maybe it was the writing, or the formatting, but something about it felt un-edited and unprofessional. Actually, the whole book felt un-edited. I can't imagine that a professional editor or proofreader read this novel and decided it was ready to be published and sold. There were so many plot/character continuity issues and weirdly worded sentences; it made me crazy. 

    I did give this book a 1.5/5 rather than a 1/5 because the concept of the plot was okay, and the world building idea of ancient Greece but in a modern metropolis setting was interesting. The book wasn't a bad idea, but the execution was really disappointing. Needless to say, I will not be reading any other books by St. Clair.