Strap in, y’all. This is a weird one.

Once upon a time, a woman named Lynne Freeman wrote a book. Like many authors before her, she shopped this book around looking for an agent, and eventually signed with Emily Sylvan Kim. Kim then proceeded to (ALLEGEDLY) take that manuscript and hand it off to her friend, Tracy Wolff. Kim also, (ALLEGEDLY) pressed Freeman into continually revising the manuscript so that Wolff could (ALLEGEDLY) use that material in her own working manuscript, which (ALLEGEDLY) became the best-selling series Crave.

Read all about it.

Now, unless Freeman is making this up wholesale, it seems like a slam dunk case to me. But it’s an ongoing court matter and Freeman’s writing is an unpublished manuscript that no one else can read, so I’ll keep saying (ALLEGEDLY) anyway.

All of that is wild enough on its own, especially the part about Kim (ALLEGEDLY) stringing Freeman along to squeeze more content out of her. But the part that gets me the most is this: Enough things in the book were changed that Wolff must have done a significant amount of actual writing. Sure, some scenes (ALLEGEDLY) were lightly rephrased from the manuscript, but not nearly all of them.

And if you’re going to be writing most of it yourself anyway…

…why is this the book you stole? It is so bog standard paranormal YA that she could have mashed up a dozen books from 2012 and no one would have said a peep. It’s boggling that this got published in 2020 and it’s boggling that she didn’t just crib from the wealth of nearly identical books that were overflowing the market a decade ago.

Sure, there were some very specific things enumerated in the lawsuit, enough of them that I believe the claim, but none of those things were groundbreaking. It seems that most of Wolff’s back catalogue is adult romance of various genres (which I will be touching on later), so did she just feel stuck trying to break into the YA market? It’s…so baffling.

And it’ll get more baffling as we go on, so let’s start.

This book has such weird and terrible pacing that I’m struggling to figure out how to break it up. Normally I like to split a review into roughly the same amount of pages per post, but if I do that this time some posts will be 1000 words long and some will be a single sentence. So, uh, I’m just going to wing it, I guess?

We start with our heroine, Grace, newly arrived in Fairbanks, AK. For a page. Then she flies to Healy, AK. I am immediately annoyed. Why did we start in Fairbanks? Why was it necessary to give us a two page sidetrack about how the little puddle-jumper plane that took her on the last leg of her journey was scary?

Maybe it’s there to warn us that most of this book is going to be pointless page-wasting. You know, weed out the weak readers early, or something.

Both of Grace’s parents died a month ago, and so now she’s moving to a boarding school in Alaska because her only remaining family – an uncle and a cousin – both live there. Her uncle is the headmaster and her cousin is a student.

Said cousin, Macy, is at the tiny Healy airport to pick her up, and they have to drive 90 minutes by snow-mobile to get to the actual school. Remember that. A tiny one-road town in central Alaska, and then go 90 minutes even farther than that.

Macy hasn’t seen Grace since they were little, and is still operating under the assumption that her favorite color is hot-pink, which is kind of adorable. She bought Grace a bunch of hot-pink amenities to help her feel more at home. So precious.

Their destination is Katmere Academy, a boarding school for about 400 rich teenagers which is a giant, sprawling castle built into the side of a mountain. Either that mountain is Denali or Denali is the only mountain the author knows the name of, and it’s anyone’s guess which.

Once arrived, Grace tries to carry her own suitcases but gets hit with altitude sickness, which is going to plague her for several days. Makes sense. Macy handles the bags while Grace…

…a flash of color catches my eye. […] I can’t see clearly – distance, darkness, and the distorted glass of the windows cover up a lot – but I get the impression of a strong jaw, shaggy dark hair, a red jacket against a background of light.

It’s not much, and there’s no reason for it to have caught my attention – certainly no reason for it to have held my attention

Then don’t. Then don’t write it. It’s as pointless as the plane ride from Fairbanks. If there’s no reason then just don’t.

They head inside the castle, which all gets lovingly described so we can appreciate it’s vastness and opulence. You know, stone walls, soaring ceilings, giant-

HOW DO THEY HEAT THIS PLACE???? IT’S ALL MADE OF STONE? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW COLD THAT SHIT’S GOING TO BE???????? Especially having giant rooms and tall ceilings everywhere. Who’s idea was this build? AND WHERE DID ALL THE STONES COME FROM? Did you cart them in by snowmobile?

They pass by a bunch of students who are doing normal free-time stuff like watching TV and being on laptops-

Are you on a power grid? Do you have, like, a fleet of generators? Where does the fuel come from?

Grace is going to share a room with Macy because all of the single rooms are already taken for this year. Then abruptly

Then [Macy] glances at her phone with a roll of her eyes. “Dad still hasn’t answered my text

YOU HAVE CELL SERVICE???? HOW? DO YOU HAVE YOUR OWN CELL TOWER HERE? WHAT IS GOING ON?

HOW DO YOU HAVE WATER? ARE YOU ON THE SEWER SYSTEM?

HOW ARE YOU HEATING THE GIANT CASTLE ON A MOUNTAIN IN ALASKA???

Sorry, I just have so many questions. And if the answer to any of those questions is “magic did it” then I’m going to hurl my copy of this book into a lake.

All of this is made even (ALLEGEDLY) sadder by the line in the lawsuit that is relevant to the location. The original manuscript was set in Alaska because the aurora borealis has some effect on magic in this world. However, the Crave series is set in Alaska because….(ALLEGEDLY) the source material said so.

This castle would have made way more sense almost anywhere else but it’s in Alaska for no reason and furthermore, no thought seems to have been put into having the setting affect the school or the story in any way.

Back to that un-affected story.

Macy decides mid-hallway that it’s just so important for her to go get her Dad so he can greet Grace. Can’t wait until they get to her room and put down suitcases, wasn’t important by the front door, but NOW it’s important, and so Grace is abandoned mid-hallway. Gotta leave her own her own so that she can meet the love interest for the first time.

His name is Jaxon. He shows up and gets TWO FULL PAGES of description, most of it being about not his physical looks but instead about his ‘deep, fathomless’ eyes, his …idk aura? Energy? Some sort of ephemeral ‘dangerness’ that’s rolling off him, and the secret sadness deep in his…idk, middle somewhere. Oh, also lots of descriptions of how flibberty Grace gets over his awesome prettiness.

When exactly did I become the heroine in some YA romance? The new girl swooning over the hottest, most unattainable boy in the school?

Do something new or stop lampshading it. This is so boring. Drawing attention to the cliches doesn’t make them better unless you’ve got, like, an actual joke to go with it.

I realize that it doesn’t matter if I’m acting like some giant romance cliché.

Because he isn’t.

One glance and I know that this dark boy with the closed-off eyes and the fuck-you attitude isn’t the hero of anyone’s story. Least of all mine.

…Why? That describes, like, 95% of romance heroes. You’d be valid saying that he’s not a candidate for a realistic romance, but he’s perfect for a cliché romance, which you’ve already brought up. It would be way more clever to have some sort of “aw, shit, this really is some sort of YA book” reaction to his looks vs this bullshit.

Also, by this point, all he’s done is arrive, but he’s just soooo danger. I see we have another Xaden on our hands.

And then we get to…the weirdest writing I’ve ever seen. There’s a small bit of banter between the two, and then Jaxon pivots to just saying “get out.” Bluntly. Something’s going to eat you. There’s monsters. Not really explaining anything, just “this is hell, leave, danger.” Grace is understandably confused, tries to verbally parry back, but Jaxon just keeps being…weird in a way that I don’t think was intended.

“More like, welcome to hell. Now get the fuck out.”

[…]

“Before something eats you.”

[…]

“What is wrong with you?”

“Got a century or three?”

[…]

“Don’t tell me what I have to be. Not when you don’t have a clue what you’ve wandered into here.”

[…]

“No, this is the part of the story where I show you the big, bad monsters are right here in this castle.”

Boy…chill. You don’t make any sense and you’re more confusing than ‘dangerous’ right now.

But Grace gets even more flibberty when he moves closer to her because, you know, hot. And then…there is sads. Yeah, I don’t get it either.

Even his eyes change, the wildness disappearing between one blink and the next until only stillness remains.

Stillness and an agony so deep I can barely see it behind the layers and layers of defenses he’s erected.

But I can see it. More, I can feel it calling to my own pain.

Yeah, I have no idea, but this goes on for several pages.

You can see now why this book is 550 pages long but barely anything actually happens.