elle's Reviews > Archer's Voice

am i.... missing something? am i reading a different book? HOW do people like this book?

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listen. i have a heart of ice. maybe i don’t deserve a romance, ever, whether in book form or in real life.

because i felt absolutely nothing reading this. possibly some rage. but that’s it. but this time, i know it’s because this book was genuinely so bad, not because i’m a picky asshole when it comes to romance.

my head is literally empty. i don’t know what to even think of this because of how bad it was. i have NO thoughts. i have literally lost my ability to think. i do not think therefore i am not.

HOW HOW HOW does this have a 4.4 rating. HOW.

as with my other one star reviews, i am going to put my review in bullet points:

SPOILERS AHEAD (but read it because you don't want to read this book anyway):

• insta love is strong here. bree sees archer and it’s almost immediate love. the silent, brooding town outcast? why not? because as soon as you see a hot mysterious guy, you HAVE to fall in love, right?

• speaking of badly written things, the two characters were so two dimensional it hurt.

• this girl saw her dad shot and was almost raped at gunpoint. and then her ptsd gets magically cured….just by sleeping next to the hot guy she met a month ago? what the absolute fuck? how did this author write that and go “yes. totally fine”.

• don’t! fucking! write! trauma! if! you! are! going! to! do! it! badly!

• “my sweet mute boy” -> WHAT? WHAT? did i read that correctly? is that supposed to be romantic? it’s just so so cringey. i got second hand embarrassment every time she called him like “my mute boy” or “my kind silent man”. literally cannot take this seriously.

• there are great romances that have some sort of tragedy as a background. this is not it. she weirdly romanticizes bree’s PTSD and archer’s disability in a way that feels so slimy and icky and made me uncomfortable reading it.

• the stripper scene. holy shit. what even was that? don’t even have to elaborate. it was the worst. also, bree forgave him so easily. babe, grow a spine.

• as soon as they confess their love for each other, they just only have sex. at one point, i started getting tired of it. like smut is great but do they not have anything else to do other than just fucking? is that it? it literally felt like even the author herself didn’t believe that they were compatible and the only chemistry she could write was sexual chemistry. absolutely no emotional connection. and the romantic dialogue was so cheesy even hallmark would have rejected it.

• archer having no idea how sex worked or relationships worked. do you really expect me to believe that? also, on that note, him just leaving bree? i just literally don’t understand how you’re supposed to root for these characters.

• the ending. how fucking cliche. i am all for cliches and tropey romances but wow. no words for the miracle ending. i actually felt nauseous.