Review: Cruel Intentions

Cruel Intentions by Siobhan Davis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The current trend – obsession, even – in romance really confuses me. In my mind, bullying does not result in love. It does not matter how people try to justify this, my personal experience has made it impossible to put the two aspects together in my mind. I have physical and emotional scars from years of bullying, to this day it still influences my thoughts and decisions, and I cannot imagine how I could have ever fallen for a bully.

In fact, when I stop and think about it I can come up with the moment that most bully romances would have turned into the moment where my feelings changed. There was one time, when I was sitting in the reception covered in blood following another incident in which I was badly injured and one of the guys who’d been bullying me walked by. He hadn’t been there at the time of the injury, but when he walked by, he stopped and looked at me. I was a mess and he came over and helped me clean up the blood from my face and helped remove the stones from my hair. In the books, this is where my heart would have turned to mush. Instead, I was terrified he was going to do something else to me.

I was terrified he was going to do something else to me, that he was there to gloat. Even when he made it clear he did not agree with what had happened, I did not believe him. I viewed it as some twisted part of the game they were playing – after all, similar things had happened before – and I was on edge the entire time. In retrospect I can see it was a turning point for him – he was never involved in any of the later injuries I received, and he made a point of checking on me when they were really bad – but during the rest of my time at school I continued to be fearful of what he would do as I did not believe it to be a real change.

I understand how easy it is to confuse emotions, I understand the science of misplaced attraction, but I find it impossible to believe someone can do a complete one-eighty towards someone responsible for so much pain in their life. It’s years later and my scars have not healed. The physical scars are faded and I lie about how I received some of them, unwilling to share the true stories behind the scars. The other physical injuries are mostly a thing of the past (although the time they destroyed my ankle will be a constant reminder of the things that happened to me, as I’ve ended up in hospital as a result of the injury almost yearly since the event). The emotional scars will never heal, as to this day I do not trust people when they are nice to me and there is the constant worry of what they’re planning to do to me.

Despite all of this, Siobhan Davis is an author I’ll always read. She has a way of convincing me to try new things and usually has me falling in love with things I did not expect to love. The fact the Kyler arc of the Kennedy Boys series is considered a bully romance had me believing the Rydeville High Elite series would wow me in the same way. After all, I do not consider the Kyler arc a bully romance. Sure, he was an a-hole, but it was not a typical case of bullying. Thus, I was eager for Cruel Intentions.

Throughout Cruel Intentions my feelings were mixed. There were times when I enjoyed the story, times when I was indifferent to the story, and times where I was finding it difficult to get into the story. Despite my feelings towards the bully romance trend, my issue was not in that. My issue was in how the book seemed to be trying too hard. Things were taken to extremes and focused upon trying to create a shock effect, which took away from the story unfolding. Things were dramatic and over the top, and I could not get on board with these things. It just wasn’t doing anything for me.

However, when things were focused upon moving the story forward I was enjoying myself. There was plenty to come together, and it was interesting to watch the way things unfolded. Only, these aspects did not remain. We regularly returned to being overly dramatic and I was pulled back towards my indifferent state. Add in the fact I did not feel the romance between the two characters – we were constantly told there was chemistry between them rather than being shown the depth of the chemistry between them – and I was surprised by Cruel Intentions.

It had the potential to be another winner from Siobhan Davis, another book capable of changing my mind, yet it didn’t do what I had hoped. I was addicted, as I always am with the author’s work, but it was lacking in the things that usually leave me obsessed with a Siobhan Davis novel. I wanted more depth for the romance, not more depth in the overly dramatic elite story. Sure, the elite storyline was important – but I got tired of watching excess drama play out, especially with how I wanted the main storyline to progress and develop.

Don’t get me wrong, this was addictive, it simply wasn’t all I’d hoped it would be. It’s a three-point-five-star rating rather than the high rating Siobhan Davis usually pulls from me, but it certainly has me wanting to see what comes next. I’m not desperate in the way I have been with other Siobhan Davis cliff-hangers, but I’m certainly curious.

I know I’m in the minority with this one, as everyone else seems to have been wowed, but I expected more from this than I was given. My fingers are crossed book two gives me the usual Siobhan Davis feels.

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