rant review – Damsel in Delight

Age Rating: I dont recommend ever reading this but it is an adult romance if you want to hate something with your whole soul.

SPOILERS – SPOILERS – SPOILERS – SPOILERS – SPOILERS – SPOILERS

This review spoils the entire book but i have a no-spoilers version on Fable if you want to look at that for the content warnings.

Its never a good sign when I finish a book and I am just so gaslit I leave it for two weeks to recoup some form of my own sanity before I go back, but this book was that. I read it because there is a new series on Amazon Prime, and i always read the books first if i can, but oh my god. This was something and that is not positive. That is i had to go and read other reviews to figure out if I was mad or not and most of the reviews would concur that I am in the minority but there are some people out there thankfully who had written down what I hated so lets get into it because I have a lot to say and it starts with bullet points that will turn into long long paragraphs because Garett is a mess and Hannah might be the only redeemable person in this book, but that’s because I want her to move universities and leave – preferably leave the entire state and every single person who encouraged her and Garett’s relationship because wtf?

Garett doesn’t take no for an answer

This man literally stalks her to WORK to demand she tutors him because he is failing Ethics. Like no shit sherlock, you don’t have any ethics to put in a paper. He asks again and again, and then sends her a shirtless pic – unprompted! – to convince her to tutor him? Then, THEN! Because this isnt bad enough, she ends up at a party she doesn’t want to be at and he convinces her to let him drive her home where he proceeds to destroy her self-confidence, hype himself up and essentially say – date me, serve me, teach me, save me and I’ll help your crush notice you. Hannah doesn’t need him, honestly, I am on the side of date Justin, he has ethics! Maybe. He got a B- which is better than Garrett and he seems to actually notice you before Garett got involved so many there is some reason in there, yeah? But no. No. Lets just fake date and tutor Garett. I don’t hate that decision at all, Hannah, I’m sure it’s not the one where you wont end up crying in a car at the side of the road in five years with all your belongings in a bag as he calls you and calls you and you spend the rest of your twenties trying to outrun the ghost of him. I’m sure. Lets go for that.

Garett’s opinions of women

“Puck Bunnies” – hate you too, Garett

Almost DNF’d in his first POV, I only kept going because of the rave reviews. I should have DNF’d I really should.

Kendell – not the only woman he sleeps with in this book, not the main character, but she deserved her own POV section because honestly? She just wanted a relationship, and then he was like I’ll sleep with you after not seeing you forever but I don’t want a relationship and shes almost crying and hes like it’s a good thing you’re not like other girls because she doesn’t actually start crying. I give you 100% odds on the fact she cried in her car after doing the walk of shame past his roommates – which, are an whole goddamn paragraph of their own right because they might be worse, Garett thinks they are worse and for him to think in his misogynistic little brain, hey they might be too far. They are. They are too far.

I don’t think i’ve ever read a romance book where they had sex with TWO different girls other than the FMC. Ususally that’s a line drawn, and the scenario of walking in on someone mid-sex is saved for cheating exes, but no, lets date him anyway after he leaves that girl in his bed and chases you down the drive saying lets meet up tomorrow!

Hannah’s opinions of women

– not great.

– i believe a highlight was presuming anyone called “tiffany” would be stupid

I honestly didn’t really notice until I looked back because Garett was so unbelievably – or rather too believably – awful, but she wasn’t the greatest. I think internalised misogyny is so ingrained in culture that its not odd for an FMC to have moments of it just because she is surrounded by it at all times but it was never discussed and Allie her friend existed only to mess with her boyfriend and say you should have sex with the playboy.

I also don’t like that she made him dinner because she was grateful for the sex scene earlier. No. No. No. The teammates made it so much worse as well, but Garett is awful, don’t wait on him that’s what he wants.

Garett = “stripper tits”

Do I need to say more? This was repeated, I might add. Multiple times. Only characteristic we really got of Hannah and only thing he ever complimented regularly so that speaks doesn’t it.

The Roommates

Garett doesn’t trust for her to be left out in the common room with his friends – yes his friends – because he thinks they’ll rape her because lets not leave those friends and roommates lets keep that going and introduce them! “They are just looking for tipsy chicks to put their d**k’s in.” – from the mouths of clueless frat boys comes horrifying truth.

Assuming she is a stripper because she’s wearing a waitress uniform and a birthday present

Saying Kendell was a “gift” and surprise waiting upstairs.

That friend of his who was in love with her and then she went in the epilogue to say it makes me uncomfortable, but hes just like it’ll pass who wouldn’t be in love with you was weird as well. Garett should have had a conversation with him, because ogling your friends girlfriend is weird, its weird when she was a tutor too, but its weirder when you know they are dating.

The Punch

Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate so much. If you have read it then you know what moment i mean, if you havent he decides to punch a guy who defended her rapist on the stand at a random hockey game. I get it, you’re angry, but lets manage that, yeah? Lets not punch people. She didn’t ask you to do that, there is a reason she didn’t want to tell you who he was in her past, its because instead of comforting her, you go punch him.

HIGHLIGHT

The dean kiss because I hate Garett so much that yes hannah lets do that. Its toxic but its fun! I want more of that, I want fun and flirty romance, I want wild situations and sitcom level laughter with deep moments.

The Trauma

Hannah had therapy – not enough – and Garett has had none. Why is every backstory of every MMC now that his dad beat him up? Why? Especially because Garett was right – you are angry and rageful like your dad (the punch anyone) and you probably will turn Into your abusive dad because your views of women are abhorrent. Hannah’s trauma was horrific, and so matter of factly said like it was just a checklist to add to her past was horrific as well. I get that she had come to terms with it, and she was calm, and yet sometimes her trauma around the rape still ruled her life, that was realistic and interesting. What wasn’t was the weirdness around Garett and dating him. You’ve had shitty exes, just because Garett has experience doesn’t mean it’s a good idea

World – 2/5 – I mean its set in America in generic 21st century frat boy athletes rule campuses with no reference to politics so its not really world its how solid it felt to me and it felt very 2D.

Characters – 1/5 – Hannah was interesting, gaslit by everyone, but a solid FMC. Everyone else ranged from no personality to awful people to should be in prison.

Plot – 2/5 – it was basic, it was outlined by tropes, it wasn’t executed well but everything made sense.

Romance – 0/5 – its not romance, its just concerning and i feel like an army of therapists should be involved.

ROMANCE RATING: Sexually Explicit, multiple scenes, detailed anatomical language (and some really weird language choices that were really odd and i wish i had never read)

VIOLENCE RATING: Level 4 – only a punch on page but we get a pretty detailed account of her rape from her – maybe three paragraphs – and we also know Garett was being beat up as a child, and that his father is still domestically abusing Cindy who we meet on page.

CONTENT WARNINGS: rape (of main character, past, recalled in some detail), domestic abuse, (past, of love interest man, recalled with little to no detail and the same man being abusive towards his mother (no detail at all) and another woman (mention of bruises). General frat boy vibes all around which is disgusting in the way they discuss women.

Age Rating – honestly i’m struggling because I dont think you should spend time reading this at any age, but it depends on you honestly. Its pretty low in violence, but very very high in people being horny even if there isnt much on the page (see details in the review) so I’m going to say 14+B and the B is for the constant focus on sex. If it wasnt for the weirdness around that I would give it a 13+ to be honest, maybe even a 12+B but with it I cant rate it any lower.

I honestly wanted to love this book so much, but I really didnt. I finished it because its Soman Chainani, and School for Good and Evil is a reread several times over series for me, but this wasnt just a new style of writing, it just wasnt good.

Benton
Dear god, what a main character Benton was and I dont say that as a good thing. He is so unlikeable, incel energy right from the beginning, and when we discover who his crush is it gets worse (and illegal.)I can pity him for being manipulated and also hate him for his lack of capability or character at the same time. His only real character traits were oscalating between I-dont-give-a-damn, i’m no fucks benny boy and just plain horny. I mean he was horny all the time, even after almost dying and the danger not over. Just horny. (I felt like all the characters were, so its not just Benton but it was annoying in a main character that his main motivation was just to be able to get That Girl. Also, I get why for plot reasons she didnt get a name until a good 200 pages in, but I dont like it. It just amplified his incel weirdness because he wasnt calling her by her name. And the plot itself was really unneeded and odd and unresolved, if you’ve read it you know. Benton’s character is summed up in his first entry where he says “the only thing that matters to me is a girl. A girl i know is The One. A girl who acts like she doesnt give a shit about me when we both know she likes me back” – um, do we? Do we really? Are we still writing teenage boys that dont take no for a definitive answer in 2026? the That Girl plot that develops is concerning in its own right, but i’m not going to get into that now.
The Other Leaders
I kept reading because I was sure that Amita and the other political leaders, who seemed at least in the beginning when we were still in the US, to have a better grasp on things and actually want to be in power, and know what to do with it. However, as soon as we get to the G-8, we meet them all. Most of them can be summed up as hot and horny except Steffi (poor Steffi) who is just nerdy and the only one with an inch of emotional stability. They were all just horny and beyond that they were stereotypes that just felt really empty. Justice for Rafaella, and justice for Mori, and justice for Elliot who could have been interesting but barely gets any time. I feel like if Soman Chainani had fleshed out all the characters by them starting with the murder earlier than almost page 300 then we could have had a really interesting all toxic politically wildcard leader cast but they just didnt feel like they got more character after Bentons quick scribbled notes about them.
Benton’s Friends
Was Freddy the only one with some political savvy? Yes. Did he earn my black mark on page 209 when he says “from the looks of her she wont take well to that” when talking about Steffi, Germany’s leader, not liking the potential reveal that Swede and Britain are in bed both politically and physically. And says “she has short hair” and “so she’ll be suspicious of the hot girl is all I’m saying”. Absolutely. I’m with Jax on this one, with his “oh my god” but poor Jax is just a walking steryotype of a hot gay boy, they call him a “turbo twink” in the actual book, and the whole emotional point of him saying he goes after straight guys because they remind him of his friends and he just wants to be with his friends was really random and like what? The least hatable out of the three main boys and the only one I think could have been interesting if he’d got more page time.
ALSO
why as soon as we were in india did Benton start comparing all the minor unnamed characters skin colours to each other and saying if they were darker or lighter skinned when it had no plot relevence? If the author was trying to make a point about racism still being prelevent in the way lighter skinned shop girls are chosen to be at the front, then that could have been made clearer, not a random disjointed sentence stuck in there.
I also have issues with the politics. It was marketed as the young people can take over politics and make a difference, but it just read as young people are horny idiots, especially teenaged boys which I have to say that Benton for 100% is and I wouldnt trust him to babysit a cat and they can feed and water themselves. However, it didnt feel like an empowering radical shift of the world like it was supposed to be, and after the politics in the beginning, I expected the big colonial reshaping of the world (iykyk) to be mentioned more than eh thats just your problem.

I’m going to talk about the big difference between this book and others, which is the 150 pieces of Nuke Orange coloured art in the book, and how it was almost written in a social media slash diary entry way. I thought it was really interesting, and it could let you predict what was going to happen happen in the chapter ahead which was satisfying for me (I predicted the Teen Swede claim) and also showed polls and social media memes (which was jarring to see in a book, i’ll say). That was interesting. I think that Young World really did achieve something in its format, which really blends social media into a book format, and has some interesting political ideas but it just didnt hit for me. Also, its not a thriller. Its political, but its not a thriller. I’m not sure what genre it is but its not thrilling.

Characters – 0/5 – I hated them all and not in a good way. Sometimes the characters who are toxic are interesting, but all these characters were was horny and that got old fast when it was just pages after pages after pages of that being their only characteristic other than a short stereotype.

World – 2.5/5 – it had so much promise, and yet I just struggled with it because the blend of reality and not was clunky. Its almost exactly the political system in America, but apparently Trump was president but only for one term? I’m presuming so because there is another election, but all the rest of the names are actual presidents and then we just have a whole made up Democrat and Republican leaders who felt like a copy paste name job from their real counterparts.

Plot – 0.5/5 – fundamentally flawed in so many places, I think that the marketing was also to blame because it said it was a political thriller, and it was political but more adventure story than thriller. How Benton got in I can suspend disbelief, I’m good at that I read mostly fantasy and I’m not one to see plotholes unless its a plot chasm and there isnt anything to cover it up.

Romance is -100000000000/5 because no. No no no no no.

Romance Rating: I have no clue what romantic rating this is, the kissing isnt descriptive at all, like one short short sentence a few times, but god are they horny and is sex talked about a lot and people wanting to have sex. There is one scene where we almost see through a video two guys (teenaged guys as well, whom i’m really hoping werent minors) have sex but it cuts of. It has very little plot relevance and raised all my theoretical eyebrows.
Violence Rating: Level 3
Content Warnings: polar bear attack, illegal adult/minor relationship (on page, never seen as bad and a pretty big thing that is left unresolved).

Tag: rant review

The Deal – Elle Kennedy

Young World by Soman Chainani