Was this Tandem Read Worth It?

I know usually your first tandem read is Empire Storm and Tower of Dawn. But I wanted to do something a little different. So I went with Scarlett St. Clair's tandem read of A Touch of Darkness and A Game of Fate.

Watch this Episode on my BookTube Channel: YouTube HERE

Tandem Reading Guide: HERE

Books Featured:
A Touch of Darkness: Purchase HERE
A Game of Fate: Purchase HERE
Lore Olympus: Purchase Here

Transcript

Charity (00:00.558)
Time to do a tannery, my first one. Okay, let's do it.

Charity (00:12.11)
Hi, I'm Charity, Book Travert Reader. Thank you for joining me. I am a fantasy lover, book lover. I love everything fantasy. If you're new to this channel, hi, welcome. If you are new here, like and subscribe, hit the like bell. It would definitely help me. I do have a goal to reach a thousand followers by the end of the year and I would love for you to be a part of that journey. So definitely everyone's first tandem read is technically Tower of Dawn and Empire of Storms, but...

I'm not there yet. I'm rereading the series, but I'm not there yet. I'm just... Anyways. So I am going to do the tandem read for A Touch of Darkness and A Game of Fate by Scarlett Sinclair. And I just found this... I'm just saying that I got this from Scarlett Sinclair's Instagram page. I'll put her link.

of this tandem read in my bio or in the description below if you want to also do a tandem read for that. I know a lot of people like doing the tabbing or if you don't want to tab your books you can just check them off as you go on here and I think that's what I'm going to do is that as I'm reading it I'm just going to check off the boxes. I just...

It's just how it is, but I'm excited about this one and I'm kind of curious to see what I like. For what I understand about these, it's about a Hades and Perfosophone? Perfosophone? Perfosophone?

Charity (01:56.366)
Persephone. Wow, I butchered that. Persephone. So this is a Hades and Persephone. It's basically per -fess -nee per -se -fess -nee. I don't know why I'm struggling saying that. It's so hard for me for some reason. But this is her POV and then the game of fate is Hades' point of view.

So as you do the tandem read, you see her side of the story and then you see his side of the story. From what I've read, it's not like a true, true tandem, but you know, you definitely kind of get like the true back and forth and you're reading people's point of view. And the reason why I definitely wanted to do a tandem read was because of the fact I, it's like, I don't want to risk reading the book like this same time. I just, I tried this oddly enough with Twilight.

and was it Midnight Sun. I'm having to do a lot of research today. Midnight Sun. So I read all of Twilight first and then I read Midnight Sun next and I felt like I was like reading the book twice. It felt so exhausting and so tiring to do that so I figured like to avoid doing that I was going to do the tandem read. Yes, I'd be kind of technically reading the book twice.

Charity (03:20.75)
Welcome, welcome back. Hello. Okay, so I am working on the tandem read. I have gotten as far as chapter 16 on a touch of darkness and chapter 18 on a game of fate. Now, my thoughts. Okay. So some of the first thing that I've thought of was the fact that this is

eerily similar to a graphic novel called Laura Lempis. And I know Laura Lempis is like written after these two books here, but I did some deep diving on these books and some people actually are convinced that Scarlet St. Clair and the

creator of Lore Olympus is the same person because the storylines are very similar in how they tell the story of Hades and Persephone. So I don't know what your thoughts are if you read both of them. If you kind of agree with that, I'm I wouldn't be surprised if it's the case if they're the same people, but I don't know. So anyways, so.

to get back to these books, right? A Touch of Darkness is Persephone's point of view and to be honest, I'm kind of bored of her point of view. Nothing is really exciting happening, especially if you're kind of reading along with Game of Fate. You find that Hades' point of view is just a lot more interesting compared to A Touch of Darkness is Persephone's.

The main plot of her storyline is her going against her mother's wishes because her mother is super protective and overbearing and is always threatening her to take her back to her realm and to captivate her and you know, prison her forever and...

Charity (05:30.318)
Persephone is just trying to live her life, go to college, work a job, and she accidentally makes a deal with Hades. Yeah, she actually has to bring life into the underworld and all she does is kind of like brings, you know, destructing it. Like if she touches like a flower, it wilts and things like that. So she doesn't feel like she can bring life into the underworld. So, and now she's like, have written, like she had an article published about Hades that got published and...

That's basically the plotline almost. It's just not very exciting to me, to be honest. But if you go into Hades' point of view, in A Game of Fate, not only do you see those interactions for Stephanie, but you actually see some backstory and some context to who he is as, you know, as the god of the underworld. He's like one of those people that is really super dark, like a morally gray character, super dark, he makes decisions based off of...

You know, the best interest of Persephone and everything like that, but he makes some pretty choi - makes some poor choices in my personal opinion, but there's a storyline. He actually is currently chasing down a mortal who is defying death and everything, and he's just trying to go against Poseidon and Aphrodite and all those, you know, other gods to take down this mortal.

that is defying the gods right now. And I think personally it's just a lot more entertaining compared to this one. Now, as far as I went, this is what they say a little spicy. And I can handle spice. I think this book is so far very well done in concerns of keeping a plot over the smut.

But is a little more smutty than I would prefer personally But at least it's not I mean at least a good Fraction of it so far is not focusing on that. It's actually focusing on other things, but we'll see How it does when it comes to this? I know a lot of people love it for the smut and I'm not I'm not here for it too much I like the fantasy aspect of it the storytelling and everything so the thing about doing a tandem read is

Charity (07:51.598)
is that there are times where it feels a little repetitive in the story. So in certain aspects of it, when you read A Touch of Darkness, you read what happened between Hayes and Persephone, and then when you read The Game of Fate, you basically reread the whole scene. And it's kind of boring in some areas because I was starting to notice I was skipping a little bit of it because I'm like, I just read it. But with Game of -

I noticed that there is some situations where there was added dialogue to the situation. So I thought that was kind of changing it up a bit and there is one part in a touch of darkness is that he was like, you've been a little handsies on me. And then in this part, you get to see what actually happened and things like that. So I think that's what I'm really enjoying is you read.

this part of the book and this fills in the context of it. So I kinda like that quite a bit. There's a lot more interesting side characters as well in the game of fate. You know, obviously there's like Hiocates, there is like other gods like I mentioned Poseidon and Aphrodite. You see their interactions and basically the only interaction that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that

Stephanie Persephone for Stephanie it's like dealing with her mother to meet to meet her to meet her and her roommate Lexi and then this One character already forgot his name. He's like the mortal that is kind of pushing his boundaries with her and he's like the mortal who is favored by the other gods and things like that and of course another and another person who is her boss, so it's just a lot of kind of

One -dimensional side characters in my opinion and these ones have more characters and just they're just more interesting people in my personal opinion so I'm going to continue reading these and I'm hoping to get

Charity (10:02.062)
I'm done with this.

Eventually in like in two days or so just to see they're not hard reads. That's what I like about it. It's not hard read It's a very easy read. I know some people could read both of these books within 48 hours I don't have time for that, but it's it's so far entertaining. So yeah, I will come back

Charity (10:25.806)
Good morning. Hello. Good morning people. I am... I'm letting you know, I'm a morning reader. Shout out to all the morning readers. Comment below if you're a morning reader. I prefer to read in the morning. I like reading in the morning that's quiet in the morning. I tried reading a little bit last night and I just couldn't do it. I just nod that person to just... I like to veg in front of a TV or something like that. So yeah, I'm a little tired still. I'm waking up.

I just only had one sip of coffee. Two sips of coffee. And I'm going to see how much I can get done with today's reading. I did finish at least one chapter last night and I'm a little bit into A Touch of Darkness in chapter 17. I guess this is the fundraising ball saying from what I understand, it's gonna get spicy.

I don't, I probably won't read the spicy scenes, but it's there. It's like right around this section in case all you spicy lovers want to know. So yeah, I'm going to do that and we'll see how it goes and see how far I go this morning. Usually I wake up pretty early to get a lot of reading done. So yeah, I have to kind of have to turn the light on because the natural lighting in this room is not.

bright enough yet. I hate turning the lights on in the morning because I'm just... I don't know why it's a morning person thing I guess. I just don't like to do that. But anyways, yeah. Let's do this.

you

Charity (12:59.214)
Alright, hello, hello. Okay, so I have finished the tandem reads and my overall thought is... It's not my cup of tea. And I'll explain to you in a moment, just let you know, spoil alert going on. I'm just gonna talk a little bit about what happened in these books and because it's not like what was going on in the beginning that annoyed me or caused me not to really like the books, but it was more towards the end that kind of just like... So.

That said, as I were to remind you, if you do want to do these tandem reads, which I do highly recommend if you're interested in this type of fantasy genre or dark romance, I would definitely recommend doing this as a tandem read only just because of the fact that Persephone's point of view and then fill in in the context of Game of Fate. So I definitely recommend do a tandem read at least.

The only drawback is that there are moments where it does feel very repetitive, where you read one scene and you kind of reread the scene, so you can skip a little bit of it, but it's not terrible, but I just, it can happen, but I just felt like A Touch of Darkness was okay, but it's only good because A Game of Fate was good. Now, Persephone's point of view was kind of slightly boring in my opinion, just because of the fact that

I just didn't feel like there was a very strong storyline that was happening. It was just a lot of her slightly dealing with her mother in these things because her mother was super controlling. She's a goddess herself and all these things and she didn't want to share for Stephanie and was suppressing her powers as the goddess of spring. So she's like navigating life and then somehow she got into Hades' club, accidentally makes a deal.

to create life in the underworld and that's how they started to get to know each other. And this whole time she is like accusing Hades of making these deals with the mortals that are considered unfair because Hades were required that they change something about themselves or they will go, you know, be taken to the underworld forever. And he, she felt like, this is unfair. That said, Persephone became a little,

Charity (15:14.382)
Right? She definitely went down the miscommunication trope. At the very end, when she discovered her powers, she did the exact same thing that Hades does. So the whole time that she's pissed off at Hades, saying, we can't be together and all these things, she did it, no problem, at the very end. So it felt like a true to character, unless she was around Hades.

so much that she finally kind of did the exact same thing that he does. All that, but I don't know. I just, I didn't like thoroughly enjoy this book. It just felt very shallow. It didn't feel very in -depth in the characters, even the side characters. I just didn't feel like I got to know at all. I just felt like it was just very level getting to know these characters, right? So when we got to Game of Fate, the only reason I really enjoyed it was because of Hades' perspective.

And with Hades' perspective, it's like you get a lot of more context of the situation and why things happened the way they did. And he's doing a lot more things behind the scenes compared to what Persephone is accusing him of, right?

So it gives a lot of good backstory. Even the side characters have more depth in character than the other one. And you got to see Poseidon, you got to see Aphrodite, you get to see a lot of the gods of the underworld and the fates, you got to know them. And even all of them, you got to know them better, right? The one thing I thought was really good about the beginning was the fact that...

There was like this plot of Hades trying to find this mortal who made a bargain with Hades and now he's defying death because he somehow made connections with other gods and all this stuff and it seemed like a big plot that was really building up and then all of a sudden the smut happened and that plot was totally forgotten and he was recaptured, just like that. And then he escapes because of a jealous assistant.

Charity (17:19.054)
And then just like that got him back through some conniving, simple ways of doing things that seems like it's so stupid to say that's how he was able to recapture him. It's like we've totally forgot about that part of the plot and that was kind of disappointing to me because I was really liking that action, you know? I'm a fantasy reader, you know? It's gotta have some kind of stake, you know? But it kind of got lost. Now...

The reason why this is not my cup of tea. In the middle of this video I was saying like, this is mostly fantasy, this is or at least plot driven and it's like we're actually enjoying this right? And it just seems like three fourths of the way plot went out the window. And it was smut, smut, smut everywhere, every moment.

There would be smut, then dialogue, smut again, and then you know, you think you get a normal scene here, and then there's smut right here. You know, so it was like as if every good thing that I felt like was so good about this in the beginning just went out the window. I am not a big smut person. I don't mind it. I'm not like prudent or anything like that, but like more plot than smut. And it just seemed like everything was just.

gone off the window once the smut started happening. And it felt a little disappointing in my part because I was getting to know the characters, I was getting to know the people, and the plots, the side plots that were happening was just very, it was interesting in my point of view and it just was gone. And it just felt so annoying that at one point there was that misunderstanding of course, and they were raging at each other and then they were like, you know, I want you to come down on me. And then they,

you know, finagle with each other and then for Stephanie just like, I'm leaving, you know, and she left. Totally left him high and dry after that moment and I'm just like, that just doesn't make sense to me. So that was, I think that's the only reason why I probably won't continue buying the series. If I'm feeling audacious enough, maybe I'll borrow the books from the library, continue to do it as a tandem read or I would just.

Charity (19:36.974)
download it from Kendall Unlimited to continue on, but I definitely won't be buying the series because this is, I mean, it's good, but it's not my favorite. I think this is a good recommendation for people, you know, where they're into the dark romance, the darker side of it, and then they want to kind of dabble a little bit in fantasy. This is not a bad option to do. It's not heavy on the fantasy. It's not heavy on the world building or anything like that. You just kind of understand that this is an urban fantasy type setting with romance as the center plot of the fantasy. And I

I don't even think I want to call it fantasy romance because it's not... it's urban fantasy with heavy smut, you know? So it wasn't bad. It could have been worse, but it could have been better too. It's not bad. I did like the gods and the grease and how it was set in this college and things like that. So yeah. Well, readers, thank you for reading with me and I'll catch you later next time. Bye!