The Collector by Victoria Scott
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
2.5
Synopsis from GR with some alterations by yours truly.
He turns good readers(namely me) into…obsessively-eye-rolling-psycho-killers.
Dante Walker is flippin’ extraordinary(in jackassery), and he knows it. His uber dickiness, hypocritical conceit, and stellar selfishness have made him one of hell’s best—a soul collector. His job is weighty(and should never ever have been given to such careless people): weed through humanity and label those round rears with a big red good or bad stamp(ah shit! We are all doomed now that such prestigious jobs will be given to the likes of Paris Hilton). Old Saint Nick gets the good guys, and he gets the fun ones. Bag-and-tag.
This was lame and I am bored.
But wait…
Those are the after-effects of the sub-waitforit-standard ending. I mean, convenient much? Led me to believe all about those weighty consequences and gave me such a sappy ever-after-till-the-next-book. Sorry. A review shouldn’t start with ranting about the ending.
Dante Walker seemed to be the anti-hero protagonist I had been waiting for. He wasn’t. Either I only prefer bad girl protagonists or my issues with this guy are relevant. To me, it seemed, after some ways into the book, that this guy was just trying too hard. However, in the beginning, I did fallfor believe his swagger. Just getting it out there. I love reading from bad people’s POV. I want them to be as heinous as possible without crossing the line into pedophilia, rape or spouse/child abuse.(I tolerate murders. Scratch that, I like seeing through killers’ eyes.) But the thing I cannot, not one bit, bear is hypocrisy. And Dante Walker is the one true once-living, breathing, walking, shitting example of hypocrisy.
Even though the letters were written in black, all I could see was red.
Well, this guy gets the job of blackening a girl’s soul, Charlie Cooper, a character I wouldn’t like to read about but not mind knowing because she is just too good. So anyways, the old shit goes down, he falls in love but he’s already made some bad moves and now the white pieces are too less in number on the chess-board. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that. Well, sure I felt him falling in love with her and it appeared genuine(kudos) but I’m of the insane and conservative mindset that ‘opposites attract’ is crap except in those few rare cases. I believe black complements white but only truly melds with black because when the two try to combine a hideous color is produced which is more of an absence of colors than black could ever be and white seems to be. However, his relationship development with Charlie, while not to my liking, is believable and fun to observe, especially after their initial interaction. And then there’s his reluctant friendship with Charlie’s friends, Annabelle and Blue. Blue is that loser side character whose sole reason is to pout and sulk because he truly loves that girl and has been her best friend forever but doesn’t have the guts to complete the love triangle. I appreciate what Victoria Scott did with him and not turned him into what I described above. Especially, as Dante and Blue seem to get along, if begrudgingly and even more as Blue busts some asses. *spoiler*Besides, I hated that she had to turn beautiful in order for him to fall in love with her.*spoiler*
And because this needs to be told as there are too many cons listed above, I enjoyed watching his character develop. His love for Charlie and fondness for the other two help him grow one. A heart, that is. He gradually becomes a tolerable character as some of his hypocrisy is sliced off by the knife known as sympathy. And then there’s this scene with Blue and… yeah, that was my favorite even if some unfortunate things do happen.
I pick up on a lot of random things and many of them rile me for no good reason. In this book, it was Dante always tossing and turning and not sleeping when in bed. But ’nuff said. I need to rant about the ending.
Seriously? You going with that? It’s a writer’s-block-induced ending and it has rotted my mood. I was gonna give the book three stars for mindless entertainment but that ending made me deduct a 1/2 star.
Least and the one bothering me the most,*gags* that cover. Tu es horriblement! Oui, oui! Tu make me want to vomis! It’s one of the worst covers I’ve come across this year. Even worse than Everbound‘s and that one gave me stomach cramps. True story.
Books Behind Dam{n}s 
2.5 only? You are tough to please! I loved it (except the cheesy ending) but got mad bored with the second book, DNF it and gave up on the series.
Nooooo! I’m not. I’m too easy, actually. But not with his book. Dante bugs me too much. A lot of people who continued with the series, I’ve seen, are regretting the decision now since the third book was way worse.
Really!? I found Dante refreshing but more books about him is a total overload.
Those 300+ pages were an overload for me. You know all the lines he drops that are supposed to be sexy and funny and panty-dropping? Thought they were lame. And trying too hard. But that was way back when. And I was an idiot then. Maybe I’ll like him now, I don’t know.