** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE ** 

 Copy received through Netgalley 

 ~ 

 This Fatal Kiss, by Alicia Jasinska 

★★☆☆☆ 

 416 Pages 

 3rd person, dual character POV 

 Content Warning: drowning, violence, abusive relationship, sexual assault, suicide ideation, questioning sexual identity. 

 First off, I want to thank the author for the Author's Note full of triggers. It's rare that authors give you that warning at the beginning, letting you know what's ahead. However, I found this list to be incomplete, which was a real shame. 

 I would add – history of depression, mentions of death, rape, self-harm (digging nails in to calm a panic attack) and questioning gender identity. 

 ~ 

 DNF'd at 15% (page 67) 

 Honestly, I contemplated DNF'ing this at 9%, but my policy is to give a book this long around 10-20% to convince me to keep going, so I persisted. I gave it until 15% because I badly wanted to enjoy it, but the story never really took off. 

 For me, this is one of those stories that has so much potential but never reached it. 

 The concept was intriguing and had great potential, it just never felt realised. Maybe because I just finished a similar folklore book I loved, but this one fell flat in comparison. The story meandered along, promising things that it just didn't deliver, becoming slow and bland. 

 In terms of characters, there are really only 2 main characters who matter – at the point where I stopped – which are Gisela and Kazik. Though, by reading the blurb and other reviews, this is a poly romance so there is a third character, though I can't say whether he has a POV or not. 

 Gisela is the main character IMO. She occupied 80% of the POV that I read. She's a water nympth, or rusałki. In the book, they're described as: 

 “Rusałki were maidens who had met untimely and violent ends. They were cursed to haunt the waterways in which they'd drowned, bound to live as restless spirits, unless one of two things happened. 

 The first was if their death was avenged.” 

 The description makes Gisela's future journey sound interesting, but for me she was a selfish, vain young girl with only one thing on her mind. I found her insipid at times, flighty and superficial. Even beyond her desire to become human again – accomplished if a human kissed her – all she could think about was how attractive everyone was: Yulia, Kazik and Aleksey. She didn't even hesitate to think about how best to manipulate others to get her own way. 

 Kazik was, to me, the only interesting character so far. He's been burdened with a heavy weight of responsibility from his family of witches/exorcists and Gisela does nothing but cause trouble. I can see why he'd be annoyed with her. 

 All of the nymphs felt one-dimensional. There wasn't one (yet) who felt smart, brave or strong, and when anyone did risk sounding that way, they were quickly described as being manly, butch or it was implied they were trans/questioning their gender. Gisela herself is always identified as she/her throughout the book, yet when it's mentioned that Yulia sees herself as a man rather than a woman, suddenly it's mentioned that Gisela doesn't feel strongly about her gender identity, either way. It's implied that she'd non-binary, but she 'lets' others call her female because it's 'easier'. It felt like a lazy way to be LGBT-inclusive or to somehow make the poly relationship that followed more likely or acceptable. It never felt genuine or natural to the character. 

 I also felt like the language didn't feel natural to the world, either. The world that was built was floral and folklorish, with a historical fantasy twist, but the language was quite modern and jarring to read. 

 Overall, the book had too many issues – the language, the character inconsistencies, a plot lacking direction, a conflicting concept, and unrealised potential – that I just couldn't get into it. It felt boring, like it was going nowhere very, very slowly. 

 Unfortunately, if it couldn't grab me by 15%, that wasn't likely to change.