Kiss The Villain: A Dark MM Enemies to Lovers Romance

Most Helpful Review

"I was excited about Kiss the Villain, when it was teased inside God of Fury, which was a well-written, excellently crafted story. GoF is hands-down, Rina's strongest book. I am a avid fan of Gof! I wish I could say that the same craft and depth was taken with KtV, as GoF. Unfortunately, it doesn't even feel like it's the same author. It's not about comparing it to a favorite book, or even about a dark narrative or even the story as a whole. It is about the writing and execution.No matter what you have to structure and craft to sell. And this felt unorganized. It's a must to also sell the main relationship in order to hook the reader. Especially if that's going to be the whole of the story. GOF, was a novel, in the sense that the characters Niko and Bran, had their own individual journey. They had their own friends. Their own traumas. KISS relied on the relationship of Gareth and Kayden. You didn't have the external friendships that are so present in LOG. Or individual journeys. So the fundamental necessary moments of building a relationship of intimacy and depth, that you see so vividly with Bran and Nico, HAD to be done with Gareth and Kayden. Sadly, were not.Time skips were a killer in this story. Instead of living in the moment to absorb these character scenes, the skips take place, and then recaps are done within a couple paragraphs. You learn that the characters spent time together doing an activity that was off page. That activity would have developed them as a couple, endeared us to them and grown our attachment to the characters. It would've sold us their relationship. Since there wasn't much of an external story to them, that was needed.Nico and Brandon's entire relationship was crafted very perfectly with this type of thing -- Agatha Christie, or running, cooking, making tea -- and Kayden and Gareth just had zero. And a lot of it had to do with the actual personalities of the characters having some sort of antisocial personality disorder. But at some point in time, you have to have some sort of emotions and you have to take time for us to be with him and feel them and live inside their bubble. BE PRESENT. There would be recaps of things they apparently they did together: Gareth would like buy things for their apartment, and apparently they took pictures together and etc. But it was all skipped.The book also had too much internal dialogue. It did a lot of telling instead of showing. It would tell you that something was passionate instead of showing passion. It would tell you that something looked a certain way instead of describing it to look a certain way. It would give you an entire backstory on something in the middle of a scene, instead of just developing it into actual dialogue. It seems that there was an editor that didn't edit.Important topics done off page: building relationships like with Vaughn. There was in a huge relationship that was built with Gareth and Vaughn that was done off page and that is insane! A lot of growth that was necessary to be seen and a relationship development and it is wild to me that that was done!Maybe there was just a rush to get through? Or a lack of connection. But there seems to be a disconnect with trying to build this story authentically.I want Vaughn's book to be good. But with the way that this book went I just have lost a lot of anticipation. It's not that it can't be a good idea. It's the execution of it. You can't just throw something together, with a bunch of likeness of other books that you've read and not give it depth.Amazon does not allow one stars. I think that needs to be discussed. I hate to have done that but there's just so many errors with this in the problematic decision-making, with grape of the wife, Is another issue. 1.5✨. I read a lot of dark romance with a lot darker material than that, it's just all of it put together. I'm sorry. I will still read Vaughn's book. I just hope she takes some of this to heart."