Tomb: Exposed by Ella Burns

2 Stars

The writing and editing of the ARC version of the manuscript was fairly clean, with occasional typos. Hopefully that will be fixed in the retail version. The world building was pretty bad, with me not getting any details about what caused the collapse of society or any of the political realities of the world beyond the prison. The prison itself was sketchily described, and I never got a good picture of what it looked like. The characterization was minimal, with the me the reader not really getting a good feel for either the hero or heroine as complex people. The development of the romantic relationship left me largely unmoved, maybe because the characterization was not good enough for me to emotionally invest in either of these characters. The plot and pacing had a lot of action, but I struggled a bit getting through this novel. There was high angst and very high stakes, but I did not especially enjoy the high stakes in this novel. I typically enjoy high stakes in a romance novel. This novel used the Cross-Dressing Heroine trope and the Prison Planet trope. The world building was two stars. The plot and pacing were three stars. The characterization and development of the romantic relationship were also two stars. The combined score of this novel was therefore two stars for me. This is the first novel in a trilogy, but thankfully it did not end on a cliffhanger, so that is a plus. I do not recommend this novel for readers who enjoy the Prison Planet trope, because there are many better romance novels that use that trope. I am uninterested in reading the next novel in this series, and I will not be buying 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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