Tara: When I’m looking up f/f titles for Hide Your Wallet posts, I occasionally come across a blurb that sounds so full of crazysauce, I immediately show Shana.

The latest was for Queen of Humboldt. Check this out:

Marisol Soltero’s life is built on big scores and fast women. From her nightclub she rules over the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago with ruthless calculation. Though everyone knows her as the Queen of Humboldt, Marisol lives part of her life in the shadows. When she hears of an impending assassination attempt against the Governor of Illinois, those shadows threaten to ruin everything she’s built.

Governor Sabrina Sloane has spent her life cleaning up the streets, first as State’s Attorney in Chicago and then as Governor of Illinois. Every criminal to cross her path has ended up behind bars―except one. When that criminal saves her life, she’s forced to shine new light on everything she thought she knew.

As a mutual enemy forces them together, Marisol and Sloane must work as a team in a fight for their lives. Can they overcome their differences and their growing attraction to find their way to freedom? And can Governor Sloane ever bring herself to trust the Queen of Humboldt?

Usually Shana says something like “You’re going to review it, right?” And sometimes I do! But this time? She agreed to review it with me!

Shana: You know the more bonkers a book is, the more I’ll probably love it. Still, this wasn’t nearly as over-the-top as I was hoping. After their brief affair turns sour, Marisol goes back to her life as a crime boss, and Sabrina Sloane goes on to build a career as an earnest do-gooder. Sabrina is embarrassed about their previous relationship, and Marisol loves teasing her when their paths cross. The book sets up this dynamic quickly, and within a few chapters Marisol and Sabrina are thrown together in forced proximity. Marisol still wants Sabrina, but Sabrina doesn’t trust her, so there’s a strong enemies-to-lovers element.

I often struggle with violence, tension, and sex on the run in romantic suspense novels, and Queen of Humboldt was no exception.

Tara: I agree, it doesn’t help that the blurb is misleading. I thought the book would be about them in Chicago, working together to stop the people who want to kill Sabrina. I didn’t expect that most of the story would take place a decade after their fling, when Marisol saves Sabrina from an assassination attempt only for them to be kidnapped and transported to a country where Marisol has nothing but enemies.

I was also a little surprised by how easily I was sucked into this book, because suspense is not my usual thing. I was put off by the violence, however, especially in some of the flashbacks.

Shana: The violence was rough for me too, although I appreciated that one of the major villains is a woman. Jordan is Marisol’s protege and former lover. When she discovers Marisol’s been secretly keeping tabs on Sabrina, she decides to use that interest against her. There are many scenes of Marisol tied up, while Jordan mocks and tortures her. If Jordan had been a man, this book would’ve been unreadable for me.

Tara: Oh, one hundred percent. I was especially not okay with it when…

I liked that the story was told in two timelines. The first is the main storyline in the present day with the assassination attempt and kidnapping. The second is a series of flashbacks starting when Marisol is five, which fill in her backstory. Sabrina gets a couple of flashbacks, too, but they don’t help us learn much about who she is as a person. The pacing in both timelines the best element of Queen of Humboldt for me. It was so good that I gobbled this in two evenings, and I haven’t read a book that quickly in months.

Shana: The book definitely moves at a fast clip, eschewing character-building in favor of action. Marisol and Sabrina are in such an awful situation, it was hard for me to imagine how they were going to escape. Which made me want to keep reading.

Tara: I couldn’t agree more! Reading it was like watching a 90s action movie: lots of style, little substance. As soon as I figured that out, I was able to forgive some of its problems and just roll with it. Like, why does Marisol see such heinous shit happening to women when she’s growing up? Because it’s the backstory for her big hero moment. That’s not okay, but it bothered me less once I noticed the 90’s-action-film vibe, because the pattern recognition part of my brain kicked in.

That said, Marisol or Sabrina don’t feel like real people. I didn’t love how Marisol would occasionally drop one word in Spanish, which is always italicized and therefore made me think of this video every single time.

Shana: I thought the Queen of Humboldt relied heavily on well-worn stereotypes of the defiant gang member:

“Marisol Soltero was a predator and, like any hunter, she awoke fully aware.”

And fiery Latina:

“Only one woman she’d ever met had been able to resist Marisol’s cobra-like eyes.”

The book keeps telling us that Marisol is a criminal mastermind, but I didn’t see much actual evidence of it. She underestimates her rivals, makes snap decisions, gets kidnapped, and spends the first half of the book getting repeatedly beaten up. What I tend to like best in criminal heroines is when they have emotional control layered over passion, and calculating strategy. Marisol didn’t convince me that she’s great at either. She seemed more like the hot-headed, seat-of-your-pants type. For example, Marisol tries to keep her cool when Jordan taunts her, but when Jordan implies that she knows Marisol’s secrets, she quickly freaks out.

It was Jordan’s wicked smile that made Marisol’s vision go red and her mind go blank. She fought against her bonds, screaming incoherent obscenities and threats. She didn’t feel the pain, even when a thick trickle of blood dripped down her wrists where the handcuffs cut into her flesh. She could tell by the wild panic in Sloane’s eyes that she needed to calm down, but all she could think of was frightened women and huddling, shivering girls.

When Marisol finally ran out of energy, she could hear Jordan’s mocking laughter. Marisol took a moment to chide herself, then immediately began planning how to take the advantage back.

Tara: And, sadly, as little depth as there is to Marisol, there’s even less to Sabrina. They each think of the other as “the one who got away,” except for Sabrina, it’s because she never managed to lay any charges on Marisol. Sabrina is solely there to fulfill the action film role of Love Interest. So, we don’t learn anything about her except that she’s the Governor of Illinois and she used to be very good at putting away criminals whose names aren’t Marisol Soltero.

Shana: You’re right, the characters were super shallow. I will read the shit out of a character study where nothing happens plot-wise, so this might just have not been the right fit for me. But I also rarely read fiction about U.S. prosecutors or police, so I was glad that Sabrina’s work was glossed over. The book just sketches out enough of her law and order perspective to create a real obstacle to her relationship with Marisol.

Tara: Some of you might be wondering “What’s the romance like?” It’s more of a HFN than an HEA ending, and even then, I only believe in it as much as I believe in Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock’s HFN in Speed (aka, not a whole lot).

Shana: Speed is a good comparison, because it takes them most of the story to figure out how to escape. This is a revenge fantasy, so I also thought the book felt similar to John Wick or Taken.

Ultimately, I gave up on the book because I didn’t want to read about sex trafficking, and the violence and humiliation directed at Marisol was more than I could stand. I like action stories where heroines fight back early and often. I was over halfway through the book and the heroines were still trapped, and on their way to more torture with a new Big Bad, so I decided to jet.

Tara: I struggled with the grade for this book. On the one hand, I had fun with it once I dropped my expectations and decided to enjoy the ride. On the other hand, I almost bailed when Jordan was torturing Marisol, because it gets pretty intense, and it’s a big problem that the blurb doesn’t align with the actual story. I also wanted to throw my Kindle across the room when the sex scene eventually happened.

Shana: Sex scenes where terror is supposed to be an aphrodisiac rarely work for me. I have no problem believing in ninjas parachuting in to save the day, but sexytimes when you’re covered in blood and bruises? No.

Tara: When I look at the balance sheet of how much fun I had minus all the problems, I’m giving this a C-. If you can handle the violence and like the idea of a fast-paced adventure, then you might like this a lot. If none of that appeals, I’d pass on this one.

Shana: I would also give the first 60% a C-. It hit some of my personal triggers, but I was left feeling more meh than angry. I would rather watch The Old Guard than read this book any day but I think this might appeal to readers who like action movies, and can hang in through many setbacks for an eventual emotional payoff.