Pride (Colonel's Conquest Book 2) by Julia Payton

2 Stars

The writing and editing was fairly clean, with occasional typos in the ARC version of the manuscript but awkward sentence structure. The world building was not especially well done, with this dystopian world and society not being well described at all. The characterization was flat and clumsy, which is especially problematic in a dark romance where the author needs to make the romantic hero/villain compelling enough that the reader first hates him and then slowly falls in love with him and buys into an HEA where the heroine ends up in a committed relationship with him. The development of the romantic relationship was very poorly done, with me the reader not witnessing these protagonists going through the process of falling in love. Especially since the romantic hero is still a flat, one dimensional evil villain by the end of the second book in what I assume will be a trilogy? The plot and pacing were awkward and uneven, with the introduction of the secondary relationship half way through this novel. There was very high angst, which is typical for a dark romance, and very high stakes, which I typically enjoy in my romance novels. This novel used the Earth Needs Fertile Women trope common to dystopian and post-apocalyptic romances. It also used the Enemies to Lovers trope and the Partner in Trouble trope. The world building was two stars. The plot and pacing were both two stars. The characterization and development of the romantic relationship were also two stars. This novel also ended on a cliffhanger, on top of being poorly written, so that is a negative. I do not recommend this novel to fans of dystopian dark romance, since there are so many other trilogies that are considerably better written. I will not read the last book in the trilogy, and I do not plan to buy myself a keeper copy of this novel.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

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