Steff Fox's Reviews > The Cursebreaker #1-2

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One of the hardest things about reading A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer was how much I desperately wanted to like it but just couldn't bring myself to. It was a Beauty and the Beast retelling, both things that I love immensely, and it had representation for cerebral palsy, which I've never seen in a book before. Plus, the cover is amazing. By and large, I should have loved this book.

But in all honesty, I kind of hated it.

As always with a retelling of this nature, readers soon find themselves introduced to the beauty and the beast of the story. There's a curse that transforms the prince into a monster, though in this case, he's only a monster for the end of a season rather than when he and the girl he's meant to fall in love with first meet. There's an enchantress, who also serves as the villain of our story, and the kingdom has been left to fend for itself while the prince focuses entirely on breaking his curse with the help of his most loyal guard who also serves to kidnap women for him to potentially trick into loving him.

Beginning simply with that short summary, this story already sounds awful. The most glaring piece of it lies in the fact that all the women are kidnapped and brought to the castle in order for the prince--who's looking pretty selfish at this point, let's be real--to convince to fall in love with him so he can break his curse. Now, I'll be honest, Prince Rhen definitely doesn't deserve a lot of what he goes through at the hands of the villain--her motivations are incredibly petty and ridiculous, really--but that doesn't quite justify ordering your guard to kidnap women. There's such a blatant disregard for every single one of these 300+ girls, some of which died in the process of Rhen's selfish quest.

Unfortunately, though, not only is Rhen vastly unlikable, which doesn't change much throughout the book, he's also rather flat as a character. He barely develops at all, only being moved to care about his kingdom and people by being manipulated, and never really seems to get past the whole woe-is-me attitude. His completely inept at charming Harper and yet somehow she magically grows to care about him as time goes on, leaving the romance feeling very insta-lovey and contrived.

Which brings me into the fact that Harper and Rhen had absolutely no chemistry. What's even worse, Harper actually had chemistry with Rhen's guard, Grey. And here is where I laugh because I literally spent half of this book waiting for Beauty and the Gard to become a thing and run off together or kill the selfish prince. After all, what other purpose could there be to set up a potential love spark between these two characters?

And then there's Harper who, barring the fact that she had cerebral palsy, was completely irritating and flat as a character. I deeply appreciate the rep as that is extremely important. But when given to an annoying, not-like-other-girls trope of a character...what's the point? As simply as I can put it, I kind of hated Harper. She was very cookie-cutter in how much she fit this mold caricature of strong-willed fighter types that somehow still constantly need to be saved and all the guys somehow find more impressive than every other female they know. As if someone who likes to ride horses and wants to learn how to fight could never possibly appreciate finery and clothing. As if enjoying those things makes someone an idiot automatically.

Despite all the men in this story finding her immensely impressive and interesting, I couldn't get past how dull and annoying she was. Add in the fact that her purpose in the story was to pester and shout at Rhen until he did the right thing and I found myself rolling my eyes far too often. Which is even more frustrating because I wanted to like her. I tried really hard to like her. But she kept giving me reasons not to; like when she was massively shocked that a woman managed to prove herself worthy of becoming a guard and didn't bat an eyelash when she was told that the women of the castle were the only ones charged with decorating it. And yet, somehow, this story was meant to be feminist?

Ironically, though, all of that pales in comparison to the pretty average, bordering on poor writing throughout and absolutely ridiculous plot twist that came about at the end. There were a lot of sloppy moments and though the writing was engaging and fast-paced enough, it wasn't impressive in any way. And I know a lot of people were amazed by that epilogue, but frankly, I thought it was the dumbest possible direction the book could have headed in. I was already annoyed beyond belief at the love triangle set-up and then Kemmerer had to go and make it ten times worse. Perhaps I'm one of few, but I also saw that plot twist coming a mile away.

Now, there were some things that I liked of course, though they were few and most weren't even focused on long within the novel. Grey was very likable--barring the fact that he was the one kidnapping the women--and I enjoyed his character for the most part. I was especially kind of rooting for him to run off with Harper, though I knew that would never happen. Overall, this was an incredibly quick read, which I appreciated. And while Jake and Noah were not in the book long, I really loved that they existed in the first place. Jake did, unfortunately, piss me off at times but fortunately, I did love Noah a lot.

A Curse so Dark and Lonely is definitely not going to end up on any of my permanent shelves at home and if I hadn't gotten the ARC for its sequel prior to reading this one, I probably wouldn't have bothered to read it merely due to how much I didn't like the main characters.

A Heart So Fierce and Broken by Brigit Kemmerer was much better than A Curse So Dark and Lonely, but I still didn't love it. In every way, this is not a book or a series I would ever bother to reread and as it stands I'm not even sure if I care to read the third novel that will obviously be on its way. One thing I've come to realize after reading both books in this series is that Kemmerer is decent-ish at being inclusive with disability and mental illness--she still has a ways to go with diversity--and has a fair amount of writing and plot ability but struggles immensely when it comes to the characters themselves.

To put this into perspective, I did not like A Curse So Dark and Lonely. I took issue with a lot of the themes and events in the novel and I genuinely couldn't stand a single character with, perhaps, the exclusion of Grey (barely) and Noah. The characters were often either flat or unlikable in a rather disturbing way, which did not endear me to the story even a little bit. Ironically, in order to like A Heart So Fierce and Broken, I had to accept a lot of things I found annoying and stupid in the first book.

And yet, I find that I truly enjoyed a good portion of A Heart So Fierce and Broken. It feels like a wholly different story. And I appreciated that about this book. Admittedly, it is unsurprising to me that others didn't enjoy this book for that exact same reason. You see, Harper was practically non-existent in this book. Which, frankly, was probably a good thing because she got even worse. I don't know where this unconditional love for Rhen came from but after the things she watched him do and the complete utter lack of chemistry they had in the first book, I was really shocked that she stayed with him. It seemed somewhat inconsistent with her character.

Grey seemed much more immature in this book, which was incredibly frustrating to see since he had been a pillar in the first novel. I found I liked him less and less the more I read, but I never outright hated him as I had with characters in the first book. For the most part, I could buy this story and I did like many of the new characters at least marginally if nothing else. For me, the stark difference with this book when in comparison to the last was the fact that nobody really annoyed me. And that made a marked difference in the level that I enjoyed the story.

It was much less frustrating to be in the heads of characters that I could stand versus the horribly annoying ones from book one. Lia Mara was infinitely more interesting, more feminist, more developed, and just...more than Harper. Grey, while slightly less of a pillar of strength than he'd been in book one, was still likable. I wish he hadn't become as immature, at times, but I can understand it somewhat. I also really liked the kid, Tycho, just for his personality. Everyone else was meh, but not annoying.

But overall? There was very little worthwhile about it.

The one piece of the story that I did deeply appreciate was the inclusion of PTSD. As I said, Kemmerer is great at being inclusive in ways that I truly don't see enough authors doing because I don't think I've ever seen PTSD referenced in a fantasy novel. And here it was. Admittedly, I think she went a bit far with it and the portrayal of Rhen wasn't entirely accurate to fully write a character with this particular illness, but it was there which was amazing to me. Still, it wasn't developed how it should have been. Frankly, Kemmerer rushed it and made several decisions that resulted in the concept of Rhen having PTSD suddenly seemed unrealistic. I think she needed more time and more research.

Of course, Kemmerer still likes to include immensely stupid plot points for shock value and so just as she did with A Curse So Dark and Lonely we get an incredibly idiotic and unfathomably improbable twist at the end of this one. While the dumb and annoying plot twist from the first book was at least reasonably realistic if still trope-ish and ludicrous, the twist in this one is so insensible that I spent a good twenty minutes after it thinking...what?

People with PTSD avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid triggers for obvious reasons. So, what Rhen was made to do at the end was...dumb, just so dumb.

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