Book Review: Friend-Zoned (Friend-Zoned #1)

by Belle Aurora

Rating: ⭐1.5/5⭐

Nikolai Leokov never thought he’d fall in love with the only girl he’s ever befriended.

Valentina Tomic has issues with commitment after the ultimate betrayal.

When Tina decides to make broody Nik’s day better, she never thought she would end up friends with the hard man.

Nik has never had a woman be so affectionate to him without expecting something in return.

Nik and Tina cordially invite you to read Friend-zoned.

A story of friendship, humour and love.

Review

This book was an absolute masterpiece in telling instead of showing. Every. Single. Little. Thing.

As a reader, when I come across work like this, it makes me feel as if I’m being treated like an idiot. Like, if things aren’t painstakingly spelled out, letter for letter, and are instead hinted at, or illustrated, I’ll get confused or stuff will just fly clear over my head.

Reading Friend-Zoned was can be summarized as being subjected to a constant stream of exposition and info dumps.

And my copy wasn’t even properly formatted. It was an unpleasant experience all around. Honestly, I’m slightly shocked that I even managed to get through this book. It’s probably not all that nice for me to say, but I’ve read fanfiction 50 times better than this.

The verbal tenses were all over the place, the story was all over the place, even the characters were all over the place. At times, I legit thought I was reading a romance/thriller parody, that’s how ridiculous I thought it was. As main characters, Nik was utterly unoriginal and Tina was just unbelievably annoying. Way too over the top no matter what emotion she was displaying. Screeching at nothing, howling with laughter, waling with sobs, crying at the drop of a hat. Girl, you may need some mood stabilizers. That’s just not healthy. Also, she swinged back and forth between acting like a tween and a grandma. It was very off putting. She was an almost 30 year-old lady who wrote in her chats like a 13 year-old girl who’d newly discovered IM, and thought it was the coolest thing ever to abbreviate and put numbers in everything. But at the same time, she walked around patting people’s cheeks, uttering the weirdest exclamations and calling everyone honey, like she was a southern woman in her 60’s or something.