What a fever dream of a book, I tell ya hwat. To shelve it into a category, this is a dark fairytale (Beauty and the Beast) romance with dystopian elements.

Set in a sort of futuristic Silicon Valley, four families run the world’s most prominent social media conglomerates. Those conglomerates are run on different gemstones, with each family having an affinity for specific stones (garnets, diamonds, etc.). Their company’s power (I think? I’m honestly still confused by this part of the plot) hinges on people within the families being able to charge their stones with their own energies, and through social media reach. Each company also has a specialty in terms of how they reach their audience (i.e. emotional connection, mental connection, etc.).

Still following? No? Me either!

The heroine Alana is now the heir to Aquarius Social after the mysterious death of her brother. Aquarius is currently ranked fourth out of the four major conglomerates and Alana’s dad doesn’t love that. He thinks a merger with the heir of one of the other ranking companies would be beneficial and decides to marry her off to a man named Cal.

Thorn is the CEO of Malice Media, which is the most powerful of the companies. He’s been stalking Alana for months and isn’t too pleased to learn about this arranged marriage. What’s a man to do? Well, kidnap her, of course!

He’s scarred and cursed (obviously). Someone infected the garnet that powers his algorithm and that virus then infected him during a charging session. He’s slowly freezing to death with ice filling his organs.

The book is full of your classic “I know your body better than you do, even if you’re saying no.”

In fact, Thorn’s entire personality can be summed up in this quote from Alana:

Everything I know about Thorn tells me he would never respect a boundary he himself hadn’t set.

It gets old pretty quickly and I found myself frustrated that the heroine’s snarky responses had no follow through in her actions. Her boundaries were the consistency of a wet paper bag. She was dickmatized.

This also applies in a non-sexual capacity. There’s a scene where she’s attacked by a prominent figure but refuses to say anything publicly because she says she waited too long to say something to the police and blasting him on social media would turn into a he said/she said scenario that wouldn’t end well for her. I honestly would rather not see our reality of women reporting violence reflected in my romances, particularly in a romance featuring some wild fantastical elements like social media power crystals..

After finishing it, I honestly don’t know if I liked it. The social media and gemstone concept was interesting, but confusing. I thought the first half was decent and I breezed through the entirety of the book in a matter of hours. But the violence against women and the constant overruling of the heroine’s wants and needs by literally every man she encounters was exhausting. I feel like if it weren’t for that element, this book could have been more campy, off the wall, and fun – it could have been more of an F+. That being said, book two seems to have much better reviews on Goodreads and I already own it. I’ll continue the series, though probably not right away.

The whole thing felt like an SNL Stefon sketch because there’s so much going on.

This book has everything:

– social media powered by crystals
– being scared and horny
– a knife hilt in the hoo-ha
– serial killers
– twitching and fiery balls
– a type of synesthesia where you can taste people’s words
– a phobia of argyle patterns

You name it. It’s in there.

It’s honestly all too much to go into each of the above individually because we’d be here for the entire week. I will say, the hero’s balls twitched and were “on fire” so much that I had to stop and ask my partner if that was a thing. Their answer: not really. Myth busted.

To really end this one of a kind reading experience on a high note, the back of the book included a Spotify playlist. I knew maybe a quarter of the artists featured, but once I saw a particular track, I completely lost my mind. Like I’m talking 10pm fit of giggles and snorts.

So let’s cap things off together, as we listen to track eight from the One Cursed Rose playlist.