This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviewed at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @‌thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.

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Gruff immortals meet a baby in Scorched By Sin, but while the central romance was swoonworthingly romantic, it left me cold because of how it handled postpartum depression as a central plot topic.

Dark angels are a specific subset of immortals who are tasked with purifying the evil out of earth. Their function as the kidneys of the universe is rewarded by those on high: they’re each given a fated mate in the afterlife, a person who died with a broken soul after their time on earth. Zackeriel is shocked to learn that his fated mate is still alive, and, even better, he can do something to stop her soul from breaking. He heads to earth to prevent this from happening, rejecting centuries of tradition and protocol to do so.

Mia Harris is a brand new mother who is suffering from postpartum depression. Her son’s father has abandoned them both, but her life wasn’t that great beforehand, either. Just as things seem to be at their most dire, Zackeriel and his band of brothers show up. They’re great with her infant son, and Zackriel is awfully supportive toward Mia, fostering a bond between them. But just as their love starts blossoming, Mia and Zack must deal with the ramifications of Zack’s choice.

Scorched By Sin is extremely fanfictiony, to the point where I started playing Spot-the-Trope bingo. There are the fated soulmates, the bad previous boyfriend, the angst-ridden third act. The premise has some unique spots, especially the long-suffering troop of angels and their long-term mission. But in spite of some very interesting ideas, I couldn’t help but wince at some of the plot choices that pulled me right out of the book – and this is a story where the mortals threaten each other with lava!

Turning postpartum depression and domestic violence into a plot point injected into an intense angsty romantic drama about angels was always going to be a dicey choice, and Scorched by Sin absolutely lacks the ability to deal with this properly.

Zack shows up and Mia’s depression magically lifts as they go out to dinner, or his brothers in arms look after the baby. Everything gets easier for her because she has support, but it makes PPD – a very complicated problem that requires so much more than a good meal and a little bit of listening – look like child’s play. To be very clear: it’s not bad to help the mom of a newborn by doing these things, but postpartum depression is a complex issue that requires so much more intervention and care, up to and including psychiatric support.

None of the realities of postpartum appear in the book; it’s treated as a minor problem that is easily solved with food, sex, and babysitting, which I found insulting and irresponsible. This is not the only obstacle that’s far too easily solved in this story, but it’s the worst of them in my opinion.

Zack and Mia are nice people (er, a person and an angel) but by the first quarter of the book, they’re already ready to tear each other’s clothes off. There’s yearning and heartbreak and lust, but the pacing felt off because I didn’t see any of that sexual or emotional tension building. It just arrives as easily as Mia’s PPD is solved. I wanted more time with everyone and everything to get my bearings, but the book wouldn’t allow it.

I don’t know if I’m asking too much to want a little reality to show up in such a fantastical plot. I think we can hit a point in our life where we want to be saved by someone stronger than us, but in this case, there are some topics that deserve more gravity and Scorched By Sin didn’t address them in a way that felt satisfying, realistic, or responsible.