Devon Rose's Reviews > Assistant to the Villain

Read this if you want an honest review by someone who didn’t even know this author was on TikTok or whatever even though I checked and I guess I follow her? I had no idea….anyway, here it is:


I was having fun, and then I was just annoyed.

I even rec’d this book to friends before the halfway mark which I don’t normally do but it was such an interesting beginning and it was kind of refreshing in its oddball weirdness.

But that schtick is really old by the 70 percent mark and that’s where I’m stopping.

This reads like Howl’s Moving Castle fanfiction in the style of a Korean romantic comedy series if that series was 300 episodes long with 265 of those being filler episodes about making coffee.

The dramatic slipping on a piece of paper and landing in the MMC’s arms? The looooooooong moon eyed stares and the barely touching hands before jerking away in embarrassment? Yeah it’s all in there.

I thought this book was for adults and I was fine with the slow burn until I realized I’d gotten pretty close to the end and they hadn’t grown any closer than two awkward kids at their first middle school dance.

The plot (if it exists) is not strong enough to support this book without a little bolstering from a decent romance and, though this had ton of potential, the romance in this book is starting to wilt before it has bloomed. I don’t need spice, but I do need grown adults to stop acting like hormonal teenagers. It’s giving second hand embarrassment at this point.

And let’s get into the weird dialogue and the erratic pacing. Some of the jokes were so weird and awkward I didn’t even realize they were jokes until one of the characters laughed uproariously…it was like this book had a laugh track.

And then something mundane would be said and a character would weirdly overreact in offense or confusion or awe…whatever it was it would be too over the top for whatever was said.

It was cringy and confusing and kept taking me out of the story. There were even times when only half a sentence would be said and the rest of the characters in the scene would all dramatically look at each other and “nod knowingly” or something and I would not know what the fuck was happening. It felt like being on the outside of a thousand inside jokes.

And THEN…why is this Villain basically running an office? I don’t get it. And I’ve seen reviews saying you need to watch the TikTok series and that’s just annoying. What’s the point of a book if you have to watch a video to truly understand it? That is asinine.

And with such a huge staff on board how the hell doesn’t everyone in the whole realm know where this guy runs his operation? Everyone just clocks out and leaves at night? They have weekends off? What the hell? The more that was written about this situation the worse it got. What kind of villain is this?

Ugh. I could literally go on and on as this long review is just the tip of the iceberg. I am at 70 percent and I can already see some “amazing plot twist” is about to happen and I care so little that I am shutting the book forever. 🤷🏼‍♀️

And I have learned my lesson and will not be telling my friends to read a book before I myself have finished it from now on.