God of Pain (Standard Edition)

I should’ve taken the title as a warning because I was indeed in pain while reading this. To be honest with you guys, I never read a book with the Grumpy x Sunshine trope. And this book is the reason why I will never do it again. I’ve never rolled my eyes as much as I did while reading Annika's POV. I really liked her in God of Malice, and I thought that I was going to like her more in God of Pain... Well, I couldn’t stand her at all. She is not the Sunshine like she was portrayed in God of Malice. I’m going to say this in the nicest way possible, but she’s just a super annoying 17-year-old girl who made the color purple her whole personality and doesn’t know when to shut up (especially about Tschaikowsky). Really, I’ve lost count of the number of times the color purple or Tschaikowsky came up. It was indeed painful. In my head, I pictured Annika as a cartoon character with purple dresses dancing to Tschaikowsky. How am I supposed to enjoy this in a dr book? Is anyone really, tho? I guess we will never really know, right? Her character was just so flat and boring and didn’t fit at all (or maybe I just have a huge problem with childish “sunshine” characters in dark romance books with BDSM). However, in my opinion, Creigh was at least 1000 times more interesting, and tbh he deserved SO much better. His character's potential was totally wasted with Annika. Even tho he seems like your typical local psychopathic serial killer with an unhealthy weakness for ropes (he even takes his girl out rope shopping), his character at least gave SOMETHING. He is a complex character who brought “the art of shutting up” to a whole new dimension, and although he absolutely can’t stand Annika, he all of a sudden decides that she belongs to him no matter what (this is the legacy of gods; of course you will be manipulated into a toxic relationship), but hey, maybe he was just waiting for someone who wants to go rope shopping with him (who could blame him for that?). As if her brother Jeremy (pick me, choose me, love me) AND her father weren’t enough, she now has to deal with another possessive and next-level toxic territorial psychopath. For god’s sake, let that poor purple-addicted girl breathe for a second. Like, what the hell is even going on in these families? How is it possible that every. single. male. character is totally messed up? And I have to be honest with you right now. Getting through the second half was pure torture. It was a boring experience, but more like the painful kind of boring, if you know what I mean, and I need at least 4-6 business days to get over this experience. There were some questionable moments, and the plot twists were just not it (yes, I’m talking about the stupid kidnapping idea). The second half felt like a huge disappointment, and from there it just kept getting worse. The twists were horrible and over the top dramatic and unrealistic and had me laughing uncontrollably for an hour straight, but that’s not the point. I’m choosing peace, and I have to admit, I still unashamedly ate this shit up because I wanted to get to Jeremy and Cecily (and let me tell you, God of Wrath is a gift sent from heaven to make us forget about all the bad dark romance books we ever had to endure), and the good news is, you don’t even have to read God of Pain in order to read God of Wrath. Just saying.