Wicked Charm by Amber Hart (ARC Review)

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Nothing good comes from living in the Devil’s swamp.

Willow Bell thinks moving to the Okefenokee area isn’t half bad, but nothing prepares her for what awaits in the shadows of the bog.

Girls are showing up dead in the swamp. And she could be next.

Everyone warns Willow to stay away from Beau Cadwell—the bad boy at the top of their suspect list as the serial killer tormenting the small town.

But beneath his wicked, depthless eyes, there’s something else that draws Willow to him.

When yet another girl he knew dies, though, Willow questions whether she can trust her instincts…or if they’re leading to her own death.

*Thanks so much to Entangled Teen and Chapter by Chapter for sending me over an ARC of this!! I so appreciate it!!*

My mind kept telling me to DNF, but it’s 2018. I’m turning over new leaves where I’m going to stick to book and not be the DNF queen. I’m a book princess – not a book queen, so I really need to learn to, you know, actually read books instead of throwing them to the wind once I get bored. While I was constantly waving my hand at this going, WHAT IS THIS, WHAT IS GOING ON, NO NO NO, I decided to stick it through, so there’s that.

Things I Didn’t Hate:

– Gran. She was cool. I enjoyed her as a character and I just imagined this constant grumpy old grandma shaking her fist at the world and feeding gators.

– Charlotte. She was cool for a good portion of the novel. I just liked how cold and unfeeling she was?? That literally makes no sense, but she just had this air of coolness to her that I was into. She showed a little bit of girl on girl hate at one point, and I wasn’t into that at all, but I did think she was super cool otherwise.

– The setting. I think the author did a great job with creating the swamp atmosphere. I would have liked a it more from it, but you could definitely feel the atmosphere throughout the story and I really did feel like I was there. The author did great descriptions, and she came up with creative ways to describe it. I thought it was intriguing and a great setting/backdrop for the story.

– It’s an easy, breezy read. I knocked this out in less than two hours, and the author has a quick writing style that is so quick to get through. I was never confused by anything, and it was never work to read what she wrote. You can always tell between the two voices that are narrating – which is sometimes quite hard to do.

– The name is clever? Oh gosh, I’m sorry; that’s about it. I AM SO SORRY, AMBER HART.

Things That Were SO Not My Cup of Book Tea:

– The mystery…or lack there of? I feel like this book literally forgot it was a mystery at times. The latter half got the message mostly, but for the most part this was just a contemporary romance where people just happened to get murdered. There was no focus on grief, I forgot all of the victims names since they were literally interchangeable, and I think they were just being killed for some dramatic effect. Most of the time we were focused on Beau and Willow’s lead up to their makeouts that I forgot there was supposed to be murders and Sherlocking going on. I also called the killer literally the moment that the killings actually finally showed up.

– Beau + Willow. Okay, I wasn’t fond of the romance between them nor the characters themselves. Willow was infinitely better than Beau. I didn’t hate her – in fact, I quite liked her in the beginning. She reminded me a bit of Meg in Hercules, and I was like, oooh, I like this. She was a little bit sassy, she played with Beau’s heart, and then, well, she gave up and became a lovesick puppy around him because she was really into his hair or something. She played around with Brody when ALL SHE COULD THINK ABOUT WAS BEAU. I didn’t even get her attraction to him because she had barely spoken a few words to him. She kind of lost all credibility for me as a main character since she really became so so focused on Beau instead of more important things, like, ALL THE DEATH AROUND HER. She just became too cliched.

And then there was Beau. He was a very unlikable main character. He was the cliche captain of the football team character…despite actually not being captain of the football team. His only descriptor? “Wicked.” He literally showed very little depth for me other than his cliched tortured past. I swear he dated the entire town, too???? And he showed little emotional depth concerning this and the fact that most of them were showing up dead. His main focus was Willow, Willow, Willow.

As you can see, they were both aggressively possessive over each other from, well, the third chapter? It was way too fast. I can get behind instalove in some parts if it’s done in a fun way or in a really adorable way, but this was just way too fast and quite unlikable from the beginning.

Merida would be shooting down the instalove with that crossbow.

– Side characters. They literally were all just there in the background. They were so interchangeable, and I never felt anything for anyone else beside Gran and Charlotte. Beau had two friends, but I can’t tell them anything about them. And Jorie lacked depth as well.

These two major parts of the book really spoiled it for me. I just kept reading because I felt that I had to. I owed it to this book. It just didn’t add up to what I thought I was getting into with this book. I thought it was going to be more of a mystery with hints of the supernatural, but instead I got a contemporary romance that I wasn’t into due to the romance and the characters. The book had a lot of potential to be something, but it kind of fell apart. There were a few good aspects to it, but the bad ones were heavy enough for me to outweigh the good. 1 crown and a Merida rating (so sorry Merida and Amber D:).

What do you think? What was your last one star read? Do you even have them? Let’s discuss in the comments below!