Rin ♔'s Reviews > Chasing Serenity

The first half had me scrunching my face the entire time because of the main character and the male character.

First, we have Chloe who's weird because she's supposed to be a well-spoken, well-traveled person which KA tried to portray in the way she talks. But she comes off talking in a way that Gen X thinks how Gen Z talks. She sounds very old, but you can see that KA wanted to make her speak in an elegant way but comes off as a try hard. The slang she uses, the way she talks. She sounds like a Gen X and this is coming from the youngest millennial. Imagine my surprise when she's supposed to be 24, years younger than me. KA really needs to talk to someone young or get on Tiktok or something because Chloe is not how any of the Gen Z talks, no matter how sheltered, how rich they are.

Then we have Judge. Well, he's the typical KA hero. That is, he's like the heroes KA has written even way back 2014. His whole vibe would've swooned a lot of readers 10 years ago but in 2024? Meh, sometimes I found him to be a dick (which to be fair, he admitted) and so egotistic. Imagine thinking that a woman dressed up gorgeously just for you? Like, she couldn't just dress herself up because it's a New Year's party or something.

And I guess that's the problem. KA's characters seem like people stuck from 10 years ago, it doesn't even make sense. The way her characters talk now are similar to how her characters talked from her earlier works.

I do love the character development that happened on the latter half of the book. KA does write family stories and relationships great, and I think that has always been her strong suit. I just wish that her characters feel like they're in the present because the vibes of the book felt like it was still in the last decade.