Review: Sweet Retribution

Sweet Retribution by Siobhan Davis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I think I read a different book to everyone else.

I hate being the first person to write a review that is not glowing, but in this case I was disappointed. Everyone is talking about all the twists and turns, all the emotions and feels, and how much they loved this ending, while I’m just sitting here searching for the things that had people making such statements.

I’m a big Siobhan Davis fan, I’m happy to dive into each new release, but since the start of the Rydeville High Elite series, I’ve been unsure. I’m the minority, finding it difficult to invest in the romance playing out in the first three books in the series. Everyone is crazy about them, but I have failed to feel the emotion.

I think, in part, this is due to how close many of the bully aspects in the first book are to my past experiences. Had a group of guys assault me? Been there, done that, got the physical scars to prove it. Had someone who was supposed to be close to me use a suicide attempt against me? Been there, done that, got the emotional scars to prove it. Decided the former are going to become friends and the latter is to be the love of my life? Somehow, I’ve gone wrong. Evidently, based upon this series, I’m a coward who does things wrong. Instead of facing things, I buried my head in the sand and tried to keep a low profile to prevent worse things from happening (not that it helped). As soon as the chance came, I put as much distance between myself and these people as possible. It helped, but you cannot escape your memories. Memories that linger no matter what, making it difficult to believe someone who experienced such things can feel romance towards such people.

However, despite these feelings, I trusted Siobhan Davis to win me over. She has done so in the past with other things, things I did not think she would be able to win me over with, and I had my fingers crossed the same would be true here. Thus, I pushed aside my feelings about bully romances and how the trend really isn’t healthy to focus solely on the other aspects of the story. Did the romance seem real? Were there twists and turns? Did the story hook me?

It’s through rating this book on those things that this third book actually spent a while being a one-star rating. I hate saying it – as I said, I’m a big Siobhan Davis fan – but such was the case. Again, the emotion between the characters was based upon everyone saying there was chemistry without really feeling it. The twists and turns were predictable – it reached a point where I was doing a mental checklist against other popular novels. There were inconsistencies with the way the characters were behaving, with behaviours changing to suit the situation instead of remaining true to what we have been learning about them. The internal monologue of our leading lady went very Fifty Shades with her ‘inner whatever-it-was-this-time’ (fortunately, we did not get an inner goddess, which really would have tipped me over the edge). Then, what really caused me to put down the book and have to leave it for a while was when we recreated the scene from Fifty Shades that I have worked so hard to purge from my memory.

At this point, I had to put the book down because I was becoming overly critical. I cleansed my mind with another read, then came back to it when I was no longer so annoyed. When I went back, the story went up to the two-star rating. Even though everything came together far too easily in the end – I really wanted more, considering how big and evil this world is supposed to be – it did not drop back down to the one-star rating. I don’t know if it was because I started this one on the first day of my period, so I was in major PMS mode, but when I came back to it, I wasn’t as annoyed. I was still disappointed – Siobhan Davis usually blows my mind, yet this one felt too easy and felt like it existed solely to appease people rather than remaining true to what it could have been – but that I can deal with.

Despite the fact this one did not feel like the Siobhan Davis I know and love, I was addicted throughout. I had to see how everything came together, which means I didn’t completely hate it. To the point where, oddly enough, I remain curious about the future books in this series. I honestly believe it was just the Abby and Kai arc that I was not down with, as other elements I was really curious about. There were plenty of points where I got to see signs of the Siobhan Davis I’m used to, leaving me with the belief the future books in this series could return to what I like about the author.

As I said at the start of this review, I hate to be the first person who does not give a glowing review. In fact, I’m fearful of doing so. The last time I was the first to put up a review on a Siobhan Davis book that was not glowing, I ended up with the comments section being overloaded with people snapping about my view being wrong. The weird thing is, it was a three-star rating, and if you hover over the three-star rating it actually comes up with “I liked it”. If you hover over the two-star rating it comes up saying “it was okay”. That’s what this one was. It was okay. In the end, I did not pull my hair out, but I did not love it either. It’s weird, but I feel people no longer use the rating scale the way they are intended. I’ve been kicked off ARC teams for three-star ratings (which, in the long-term, I feel reflects badly on authors rather than readers, especially when said reader has given high ratings to other books and it was clearly a one off), but I feel my role as an ARC reader is to give an honest rating. Not everyone is going to love every book, we are all entitled to our options, and such is the case here.

I may have been disappointed by the conclusion of the Abby and Kai arc, but that does not mean everyone will be. It’s personal taste, accept opinions are going to differ.

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