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Ace (Rant)

TW: mentions of sex, mentions of abuse

Book: Ace

Author: xxdailydolanxx

Reads: 161m

Synopsis: Sofia, a mafia princess, is arranged to marry Ace Hernandez, the scariest mafia king out there. Although their romance has many ups and downs, Ace and Sofia learn to care for each other, and Ace essentially saves Sofia from her abusive father.

I know this story gained a lot of traction on TikTok, but that's not why I read it back in the day. I read it because it kept getting recommended to me in between chapters of other books (similar to what happened with Bear in Sheep's Clothing).

Concessions:

I'm sure there is a vast collection of mafia romance novels on this website, but I do want to give this story credit for being relatively creative. Sure, it's pretty much a bad boy x good girl romance, but at least it doesn't take place in some high school. I also want to give xxdailydolanxx some credit for the writing because it's a decently interesting story, and despite being long, the pacing is okay.

Ace is a creative character. I can tell that xxdailydolanxx put a lot of thought and detail into this character, such as giving him a detailed past and personality.

The themes of abuse and mental illness are mature, especially regarding the rest of the writing in the story. I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere that xxdailydolanxx wrote the story when they were about twelve, and I will say that the writing tends to reflect their young age, but at the same time, a lot of the subject matter, such as abuse, mental illness, and dysfunctional relationships is very advanced for the age that xxdailydolanxx was when they wrote it.

Rant:

The story is absurdly long. I know I said that Entanglement was long, but Ace is something else entirely. Entanglement was a little less than 60 chapters, right? Well, get ready for 100 chapters! Yes, you read that right! Ace is 100 chapters long. The only upside to this is that the chapters are relatively short.

I know xxdailydolanxx is still editing the story, but the spelling and punctuation are so bad that it's practically unreadable. This goes back into how the author wrote the book as a middle schooler. Not only is the writing and dialogue often immature and awkward, but the story is just hard to read because so many words are misspelled, the capitalization and punctuation are all over the place, and the writing isn't split into paragraphs so you're basically reading a giant block of text, and combine that with the fact that it goes on for 100 chapters. I know that xxdailydolanxx is still editing, but at the time that I'm writing this, Ace is is still unreadable.

Sofia is immature and annoying. This is especially awkward, considering how Ace is such a dark and mature character. If I remember correctly, Ace is only a year older than Sofia, but because of how different their personalities are, it feels like she's a lot younger than him, which is really gross because this book has a fair amount of sex scenes.

(TW) I also just want to question why the heck a twelve-year-old wrote such graphic sex scenes between Sofia and Ace??

Then there's the good ol' bad boy trope. I know I gave the author credit for putting a lot of detail into Ace's character, but when it comes down to it, Ace is still a cliché bad boy. My problem is that he's just so hard, and tough, and quick to anger that he's not very likable throughout the vast majority of the book. He has his moments, but for the most part he's just another reckless bad boy.

I don't like how this story romanticizes abuse and mental illness. Even though Ace saves Sofia from her abusive father, and Sofia helps Ace cope with his own mental problems, it's glaringly obvious that xxdailydolanxx wants the audience to find Ace attractive because he has mental issues. Supposedly, his problems make him "dark" and "mysterious", and that's my biggest problem with Ace by far, especially when you consider that this book is more popular than any other book I've ranted about by a landslide. It just screams problematic.

Thanks again for reading!