That all went out the window though, I got insanely bored of Callie and Des telling each other how they felt, and the other ignoring it, assuming they were lying, or ‘misunderstanding’ each other. I was interested for a good while, I could look past the fantasy tropes as I’ve read enough fantasy that I’m bound to come across the same kinds of worlds the bargainer thing didn’t really make much sense to me really – why does he need these bargains if he’s a King? But I was intrigued by the female warriors going missing, and the freaky baby thing.

The scene where he’s ‘going down on her’, she says it’s the best oral she’s ever had, but he’s talking to her the whole way through it…I’m calling BS! It’s also odd that these sex scenes don’t kick in until the 3rd third of the book – so it goes from 0-100 right at the end. The scenes in Rhapsodic are drawn out, too long, too visceral, and don’t actually make a whole lot of sense.

So it isn’t about the book having sex scenes, it’s how badly written they are. As I’ve said, huge ACOTAR fan, and I actually really enjoy the sex scenes in that series – they’re hot and steamy and brilliantly written in my opinion. The sex scenes…they made me feel physically sick. There’s even the werewolf who loses out to the superior creature (Twilight anyone?), but he’s taken straight out of True Blood. It’s as if the author decided to chuck every fantasy legend in one book and smoosh them all together. Night Kingdom for Night Court humans and Fae living together the deep, dark, bad man isn’t what he seems humans are slaves, but not in the Night land mates wings….I could go on and on. I am a huge ACOTAR fan and although there is only a year between the two books being published, the similarities are too close to be a coincidence. I have two main issues with Rhapsodic – the way it reads like A Court of Thorns and Roses fanfic, and the cringey sex scenes. There are a couple of little ones, fair warning! Also – mature content! So, I almost always post spoilers – but even with only 1 hour and 20 minutes left, nothing has happened! I could give you one kinda big spoiler, but you will definitely have seen it coming. I really tried to power through, but I just couldn’t do it! I didn’t finish it but made it all the way to about 80% on Audio.

Bargainer laura thalassa