🕯️ I Read Sonata So You Don’t Have To (But You Probably Should)
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🧛♀️ Thanks to QP Book Tours for the ARC of Sonata! You enablers knew exactly what kind of dark, bloody mess I needed in my life. Meanwhile Me, 37% into the book: Sweetie, I stopped trying to escape this plot ten chapters ago, I’m just lying on the dungeon floor like, “Wake me when the smoldering vampire angst gets interesting.”
Sonata
Genre & Tropes
Dark Fantasy Romance™ — now with 200% more blood and 80% less actual romance!
Rating
3/5
Things That Made My Brain Go “What the F*!”
Let’s start with the obvious: this book is lightly DARK. Like “the lighting budget of a 2008 Twilight fanfilm” dark. We’ve got blood, trauma, torture, and — most offensively — ferals. What are ferals? Great question. They are monster-things that I did not RSVP for. I came for romance, not a scavenger hunt of cryptid biology that nobody asked for. I was promised tension and forced proximity, not Feral: A Nature Documentary.
😵💫 THINGS THIS BOOK DID TO ME: Yell in to the void
Saelora. A plus-sized human girl in a palace of toothy immortal sadists. She's trapped, and somehow still manages to be emotionally constipated enough to keep all the juicy backstory locked away like her actual cell. I like her, I do, but she needs a hobby that isn't trauma.
Then there’s Leish. Ah yes, Leish: emotionally tortured, speaks like every word hurts, probably listens to sad cello solos in the bath. I’m obsessed. I don’t understand him yet, but I don’t need to. I’m just here for the brooding, the simmering glances, and the potential for violence.
Let’s talk about that love triangle that wasn’t. It was hinted at. It stood at the edge of the plot like a shy teenager at a party, refusing to join the dance. I wanted pain! I wanted jealousy! I wanted awkward third-wheel tension! Instead, I got a moody side character who popped in just long enough to make me go “oooh?” and then vanished like a goth ghost.
Also. That painting Saelora found? Was I supposed to feel something? Because I did: confusion. It was dropped like a clue, then never picked up again. Chekhov’s painting, anyone? Just hanging on the wall like, “I might be important... or maybe I’m just set dressing.”
Worldbuilding? Oh, honey, the world got built. And built. And then redecorated. It was extensive, which is code for “I skimmed some pages and you can’t prove otherwise.” There’s politics, rebellion, power plays, secret passages, vampire courts… all of which might pay off in Book 2. Until then, I’m mostly just grateful the chapters had names so I could yell at them specifically.
What my Braincell Has Spoken!
⭐⭐⭐⭐ — Four stars, because I’m holding the oast one hostage until Book 2 gets its act together.
This book is like being given the first bite of an elaborate, blood-soaked cake. The flavor’s weird but intriguing. You don’t know if it’s chocolate or despair. You’re not sure if you like it, but you’re already reaching for the next slice. Leish is the reason I’m coming back. That cello-playing menace owns my soul now. Saelora better start stepping up her game or I’m storming the vampire palace myself.
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