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Book Review: The Hellion is Tamed



Fifteen years ago, a girl appeared from the past and stole young Simon’s heart before disappearing. Determined to find her, Simon tracks Emma down in the past and convinces her to come forward with him in time. Now, with the help of his friends he must mold her into a lady who will be accepted by society.

And if you’re getting My Fair Lady vibes, you aren’t wrong.


I had high hopes for this new-to-me author. The world is fascinating… think X-Men meets The Nevers with a dash of gaslamp fantasy and of course my favorite trope of all – time travel. The premise sounded fascinating.


But the book itself was not.


I found the prose stilted and almost incomprehensible. I literally could not read it or understand it. There were so many grammar and punctuation faults that my mind just broke and I couldn’t enjoy the story.


Worse, the story started in the wrong place. What should have been chapter one was the prologue. A prologue that takes up 10% of the book. I kept feeling like I was missing things. Not just things that had happened in previous books, but things relevant to this book. Things like what happened in the past. There was so much infodump on top of the stilted prose that I quickly got bored. I made it to the 30% mark before I gave up. I had liked Emma initially but as the story went on she quickly lost her spark. Simon was just sort of there. I’d be hard pressed to name anything memorable about him. I can’t even remember what his power was… and that’s a problem.


The world is fascinating. Emma had potential. But it was a lot of potential unrealized. The book was in desperate need of multiple types of editing from developmental to help with the pacing and plotting, to line edit to help with the stilted prose, and even a copy edit to deal with the very distracting punctuation problems.


But because I couldn’t read this. And because I DNFed this book. I can only give this:


One Star



If this is your jam, you can get it here.


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I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley


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