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A review by phaedraismyusername
The Saint of Heartbreak by Morgan Dante
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I just know I'm gonna be an outlier on this one lol.
When I say I was obsessed with the start of this book I cannot stress how true that is - I inhaled the first few chapters absolutely convinced this would be 5 stars. Then the pov swapped to the devil.
It should have been, and sometimes was, an interesting perspective. There was a lot put into the concept of the devil as a suffering tormented exhausted being who just does this because he's supposed to because he's condemned to it, and that is a great premise to start this slow burn coming together with Judas as a mirror image of their roles in the narrative of their stories and how they can save each other from their own eternal torments - that premise holds so much potential.
My main problem was the consistency of the language used, the opening chapters are written very archaically as you would expect from a bible based story, and it was so so good, but then it switches to the devil, an even older being, and yet he frequently sounds particularly modern in comparison which was dragging me out of the story a little. The dialogue as well, it just felt tonally inconsistent in a way I found distracting.
Also the slow burn wasn't slow enough for me, but that's 100% personal taste so neither here nor there really.
Another thing that is very much my personal opinion based on my history reading fanfiction, but this very much feels like a woman wrote these sex scenes. Now I cannot stress enough that I have not researched the author, I do not know it for a fact, and even if it is a female author I'm not implying that's inherently a bad thing, it's just how it felt to me and it just kept distracting me from being as absorbed by it again as I was in those opening chapters.
When I say I was obsessed with the start of this book I cannot stress how true that is - I inhaled the first few chapters absolutely convinced this would be 5 stars. Then the pov swapped to the devil.
It should have been, and sometimes was, an interesting perspective. There was a lot put into the concept of the devil as a suffering tormented exhausted being who just does this because he's supposed to because he's condemned to it, and that is a great premise to start this slow burn coming together with Judas as a mirror image of their roles in the narrative of their stories and how they can save each other from their own eternal torments - that premise holds so much potential.
My main problem was the consistency of the language used, the opening chapters are written very archaically as you would expect from a bible based story, and it was so so good, but then it switches to the devil, an even older being, and yet he frequently sounds particularly modern in comparison which was dragging me out of the story a little. The dialogue as well, it just felt tonally inconsistent in a way I found distracting.
Also the slow burn wasn't slow enough for me, but that's 100% personal taste so neither here nor there really.
Another thing that is very much my personal opinion based on my history reading fanfiction, but this very much feels like a woman wrote these sex scenes. Now I cannot stress enough that I have not researched the author, I do not know it for a fact, and even if it is a female author I'm not implying that's inherently a bad thing, it's just how it felt to me and it just kept distracting me from being as absorbed by it again as I was in those opening chapters.