Verona Comics - Spoilers
Wow, all I can really say is this is a terrible read. I was hooked at first. Feuding comic book store franchises? A protagonist with actual goals and talents? A shy underdog? A meet cute? What more could a reader ask for?! Until it gets absolutely fucked up.
The story starts with a sweet and talented Jubilee who is taking a break from her instrument for the weekend to “live life” when she meets “Bats” at the comic prom. They know very little about each other but even after the prom can’t keep from texting all the live long day yadayada. You get the picture. At this point you meet some of the other side characters in the story and nothing is too off about this other than the fact that the author has sprinkled a little bit of LGBTQ+ characters. Oh my god what am I saying? I wouldn’t mind a sprinkle of LGBTQ+ characters! What I don’t need is every single character in this book having some sort of sexual preference battle! The only characters who aren’t apart of the community is the characters that hardly get mentioned. It was so completely forced and weird to read. I feel awful for the community having to read books about straight people for most of their lives. I understand diversity and changing things up. I believe there comes a point where having every single main character in the book be apart of the community is a little ridiculous. Just let people be people, I don’t care about their sexual preference or orientation! Just GIVE THEM MORE CHALLENGE AND PLOT goodness.
Then relationships start developing and its almost painful. It has you on your toes a couple times but its honestly so boring. It took me a week to read this book which is saying something. I was doing a lot of skimming to get to the good parts. Ridley the male protagonist is honestly the worst type of character with all these issues and they never say why. I guess you can figure it out, his mom and dad are shit, and no one cares about him. I hated his character. He has absolutely no balls and did not deserve Jubilee at all.
Anyway I’m too heated to continue writing this book review. The ending is fucking horrible and I don’t think the author cares about her characters at all. This retelling of Romeo and Juliet was trash and if you choose to read it good luck to you. The cover art is super cute though.