Playing Through Every Choices Book, In Order (Part 26: Foreign Affairs)

Hey! Today, we head to a private school named Vancross, and learn how to waste all the potential of a good concept for a book!

Next time, we travel back allll the way back to the launch of this app, to attend Hartfeld University as a clueless little freshman!

Link to previous reviews: https://www.reddit.com/user/stresseatingdog/comments/sj3s3m/all_choices_reviews_megapost/

(Not that I care all that much, but why is the post where I link all these reviews getting so many downvotes lol? If y'all don't like the way I put them all in one place, please do tell me in the comments, and I'll try to fix anything I can!)

SPOILER WARNING, AS ALWAYS!

Foreign Affairs

M/C: Enrico Valentine

Final LI: Blaine (Male)

Favorite Chapter: Chapter 8

Favorite Character(s): Blaine, Dionne, Tatum

Least Favorite Character(s): Lewis Wright, Winston, M/C’s Mom

Overall Rating: 7/10

Review:

This book just makes me sigh. There was so much potential! Firstly, Blaine and Tatum are fantastic LI’s, but I feel like Tatum is the only properly handled LI. With Blaine, the enemies to lovers thing doesn’t work, because you can start being nice to Blaine and flirting with them the minute you meet them, and the fact that you can consistently be nice to them in the seven chapters leading up to the photo scandal just serves to undermine any sense of enemies to lovers there could have been. And then we have Ayna. Whose bright idea was it to have one of the LI’s be a traitor, in a game where the whole conflict starts with a scandalous picture of you and your LI being leaked? I think Ayna being a traitor was such a poor decision. It really hurts her likability as a LI and as a character. The friend to traitor thing can be done well, and it has been in other books, but Ayna is not an example of that. The whole book also just feels rushed after Chapter 8. The scandal is resolved so quickly, and the final chapter attempts to wrap up too much to be cohesive or enjoyable in any way. The diplomacy thing with your classmates was a neat idea, but it really doesn’t help much beyond a few bonus scenes, none of which are all that special. The “twist” with Winston at the end was so stupid, I wanted to die. Like, really? You’re trying to copy It Lives Beneath with a surprise attack in the final chapter? Well, Richard Sutcliffe was so much better as a twist final fight because he was someone we actually knew. Winston is so irrelevant in this book, I wouldn’t blame someone if they forgot he existed before the final chapter. Also, M/C’s mom is so awful throughout the whole book, and by the end she’s acting all nice, and M/C has pretty much forgiven her? Also, is she just alright with M/C dating an Ardonian of such high importance? Despite the rivalry we’re told about constantly throughout the book? Really? This book desparately needed either a sequel or just a few more chapters to really be fully cohesive... Still, this book is the only (?) book in the app to let you choose your pronouns, so that's a really nice feature. All in all, I really wish this book were better, so I could give it a better review, because I do enjoy it quite a bit, but it just falls short in the end.