Title: Blackmail

Author: Salirophilia

Genre: Romance

Quick Summary: Kid gets blackmailed to hang with other kid because Emo Izaya Orihara wants him to. 

Thoughts:

I notice the author intends to rewrite this story entirely and wants to change a lot, so I'm unsure how helpful this review will be, but here we go, regardless.

Without the first two chapters, the writing itself is good. There's a lot that needs work, but they're all easy [or, relatively] fixes and aside from that the more I read the more I found myself oddly enamored. But... there are a lot of issues, too.

Had I not been reading to review, the first two chapters would've made me drop this book like a sack of hot potatoes, and I'll tell you why.

The prologue commits the cardinal sin of prologues in that, aside from the fact it's in Casey's POV, it leads right into chapter one which is not what a prologue should do. In fact, I'm unsure what this prologue ads that we couldn't find out later. Casey blackmails Hunter... okay, and? We could have this revealed later on in Hunter's POV. It'd make for a nice twist, actually.

And also, there's Casey's personality. I think it's laid on a bit thick, how much he hates other humans and all that. He sounds like an Izaya Orihara that was yanked out of Hot Topic. This is what we're given to start with, and I don't like it. 

The first chapter is a scene I've hated time and time again: waking up and getting ready for school. I've lost count how many times I've seen this scene but I hate it with the passion of a hundred dying suns. That said, what Saliro's rendition did bring to the table is that the emotions are authentic and we get our first real glimpse into Jake and his character. I hate Jake and don't think I would ever be friends with him in real life, but it's different from the hatred I have of Casey because at least Jake is fun to hate. I know Saliro mentioned in his ending AN that he hates Jake's character but... honestly, he had something good going... if only he had not started with the wake-up scene...

While the rest of the book was enjoyable, there are some noticeable grammar errors and also places where dialogue doesn't start out with a capital. Oddly enough, that was mostly for Hunter's dialogue. I don't know if this was intentional or not. To add, most paragraphs are... a single sentence and often I found myself mentally smushing sentence-long paragraphs into bigger paragraphs because each "paragraph" worked well enough with the rest. I'm not entirely sure why Saliro decided to start a new paragraph with almost every sentence, but he shouldn't have.

I don't have much complaints for Hunter because I've only seen one chapter with him, but Marill. While I liked the "no he's not a pokemon" aside... I am incredibly uncomfortable with the fact a... what, 16-year old? is dating a 28-year old. Hunter is almost definitely still a minor, which makes their relationship illegal, and there's such a mass developmental gap between the two that even if Marill is the most unassertive partner in the universe, he still holds a position of power, psychologically, over Hunter and that is not okay. Now, if the point of all of this is to show that Hunter has some unhealthy lifestyles and coping mechanisms... okay, and I feel like that was where Saliro was trying to go with this, anyway, but even still I got to that part and felt kind of sick to my stomach. And if Saliro isn't...well... Either age Marill down or treat their relationship with more nuance. It's going to end, anyway, if the summary is to be believed.

I had a lot of complaints about but honestly a lot of them were more technical and easy to fix. Again, Saliro mentioned this entire book is being scrapped and reworked, so I don't know how much of this is beneficial to the rewrite process. I'd love to see the rewritten result, when it's up.