I can see what possible troupes that will be employees moving forward (acceptance of her station by any future men, a *gift* regardless of her condition, etc etc), and I’m really into any of that. I have zero, absolutely no interest on seeing this story progress with this plot line and this poor girl losing all freedom and life for centuries only to have one herself. And this may be controversial but I hope she leaves that life behind- completely and starts new. Now you’re telling me this girl and woman without a clue all of a sudden conceived. She doesn’t even have memory for most of this, the last time she was herself was in the opening when she was a girl. I get the plot and I understand what this prison world was like from the shara series but the fact Karmen was tortured for centuries and some how conception happened (when we’ve been told previously a Queen can control that choice of when) didn’t sit well with me. Be an adult.Īnd the final thing that really turned me off is the theme of forced relations and the result. Get over it or don’t take it out on people. Nope, you are trying to rationalize abusive behavior and tell woman to endure it and forgive it. Frankly, this guy handled all of this really poorly, and his *reasons* are a ridiculous excuse to be mean, if find this true in a lot of books where the guy is mean and they try to explain away the behavior because he struggles with the feels. He was heartless and had zero respect to her situation (even though she was clearly victimized from the beginning) and then he starts to feel bad for his behavior once he figures things out? What about treating all people with respect and care even if they aren’t a victim? You never know what people have gone through. But only because our girl was nice, and defied his expectations. At the end of this novella, he has an internal monologue where he calls himself a cur and heartless for what he did. Her “first Blood” (if you can even call him that) is really disrespectful, and not only is he emotionally blunt and hurtful, but he literally left her to die. So when this one came out and the main character was a grown woman and I hoped we would go back to more of a respect driven relationship dynamic. The Shara series was all about respect, not negging, poor communication, and hurting people because you need to “protect them”. In Princess Takes Unicorns series, the author seems to jump on the bully academy train which I wasn’t a fan of. But my biggest “issue” with this was more of the themes used to create tension. Short but also a bit different from the Shara series

Shamrocked by Joely Sue Burkhart