Review: Devotion

Devotion by Madeline Stevens
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Well, that was anticlimactic.

Also kinkier than I was expecting.

It sets the scene like this: Ella becomes a nanny for a rich couple, and becomes a little obsessed with Lonnie. Ella has nothing and Lonnie has everything so Ella naturally covets Lonnie's life, and it begins to get a little creepy.

Now, firstly, we don't actually get all that much info on Ella. She's poor to the point of starving, yet we don't ever find out much about how she got to that point and it makes her character quite weak. I never really understood where she was coming from, because everything about her and her life was so vague.

Ditto Lonnie and James. Which is weird, because the book spends most of its time obsessing over Lonnie, but it's more about what she has and how she behaves. There's no history for any of the characters which makes them pretty bland.

In fact, the character building in general is kind of ... shallow. I never properly understood who I was dealing with, so it left me fairly detached from the story.

Ella's obsession with Lonnie is definitely unhealthy, and pretty creepy. She says some weird stuff, and it's evident very early on that she's going to cause some drama for the happy family.

Only ... she doesn't really?

Like, the whole premise of the novel seems to rest on Ella's unhealthy obsession getting out of control, but nothing ever really happens? Ella lusts after everyone and there is seemingly sexual tension in everything, but in the end ... nothing really happens. You expect there to be drama, but there is nothing. An eyebrow-raising scene that seems completely out of left-field, but overall not anything particularly exciting.

Honestly, I was waiting for a twist that would completely blow my mind, but all of my guesses could not prepare me for the absolute nothingness of the ending. This could have gone in so many crazy directions and instead it just tapers out. Pretty disappointing.

Honestly, the endings I created in my head were way more exciting, and probably made about as much sense.

It did keep me entertained throughout and there were some clever phrases and things, but in the end it just seemed like such a pointless book. I never really felt anything reading it except maybe slightly uncomfortable here and there.

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