Why, I don’t know, because there is nothing appealing about him, and Cass makes it pretty darn clear that she isn’t in love with him, but in lust. So Falco is, unsurprisingly, Cass’s main love interest.

The Romance: Quite honestly, it made me want to vomit.

It wasn’t safe in the Renaissance for young women to wander the streets alone - especially at night - and hello! There’s a murderer on the loose! When we finally get to meet Cass’s fiance, Luca, the Author tries so very hard to make him seem like an overprotective, jealous jerk, but quite honestly I found his objections to Cass’s night excursions very reasonable. Cass may have difficulty piecing together his past, but the Reader has no such trouble, which serves to both destroy his “mysteriousness” and make Cass look even stupider than she already does. There’s nothing even remotely charming about him, and his “mysteriousness” falls completely flat. Here is a girl whose panic attacks can be set off by the very slightest disturbance, and who seems to have very strange and unexplained hallucinations when her emotions go too far, and yes - she faints quite a bit. She’s never kind of sad she’s all-out “I want to kill myself” depressed. She’s never just kind of annoyed she’s furious. She causes all of her own problems by not thinking before acting, her reactions and emotions are always in the extreme, and never mild. And when she does begin to show something of one, it is irritating at best. Characters: Let’s take this story’s problems one at a time, shall we? The characters: Cass, our protagonist, has no personality throughout the majority of the book.

Venom by Fiona Paul