"I would give this book zero stars if I could.

This book was sold to me as the Hunger Games and Divergent had a spicy adult dystopian baby or "Katniss for adults".

I don't know about you, but when I think of dystopia as a book genre, I think of the Hunger Games, Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaiden's Tale, Fahrenheit 451, etc. Books that whether you like them or not–whether you agree with them or not–are interested in exploring real world issues. These are books that have something to say about the state of the world, be it the exploration of the economic, sociopolitical, environmental, technological, religious, or ethical extremes. They are speculative post-apocalyptic societies that take our current day issues and imagine the extremes of the potential consequences if we don't get a handle on them. These are books that often feature corrupt, oppressive governments, perfected use of propaganda, surveillance states, war-torn devastation, environmental destruction, and extreme oppression.

Silver Elite sees all that the dystopian genre has used to explore modern day issues, and asks the daring question of "what if I used this as a backdrop for my nazi fanfic?"

Silver Elite is for the girlies that missed the point of the Hunger Games; the girls that participated in the Gale vs Peeta debate not as an ideological war between the concepts of violence and revenge, versus the hope of peace and healing, but as the vapid discussion of dark haired broody man vs blonde golden retriever.

Silver Elite is for the girlies that thought Divergent's message of "you actually can have more than one facet to your personality" was groundbreaking, or worse, were only reading it because they thought Four was hot.

It's for the women that think reading isn't political and books only exist to hand them their next copy-paste "book boyfriend". It's for the people that say "it's not that deep" in response to any single criticism of a book that they "turned their brain off" for. It's for people that only pick up romance and yet, also don't value romance as a genre that can say something interesting or thought provoking.

Because yes, you're right. I suppose any book could be five stars if you consumed it without letting a single thought enter your brain. Me, personally, I like to think when I read. And Silver Elite is really, REALLY bad.

Silver Elite isn't just bad because it's poorly written, or because the bulk of the world building can only be found on the BLURB in the front flap of the book. Genuinely, the biotoxin that gave all of the oppressed people their psychic powers isn't mentioned in the actual text until 36% through and only in dialogue even then with little to no explanation.

It's bad because it's not even thinly veiled right wing propaganda. It's obvious, blatant right wing propaganda. If this book were a person, it's that white "liberal" girl who dates nazis.

It's bad because the characters aren't consistent even from page to page, much less chapter to chapter.
For example: Wren Darlington finds out that her commanding officer (Cross Redden) the man the man she has been drooling over, is the son of the General, the dictator of the oppressive militaristic government that hunts down Wren's people. Upon finding out this information, Wren informs the reader that all attraction she had to Cross is completely gone. Three pages later, she remarks that she's never been more aroused as Cross tells someone to shut the fuck up.
This is just one of the many examples of Wren completely contradicting herself within the same fucking chapter.

Wren as a character is rather paradoxical. She clearly wants to be this badass, independent woman that doesn't give two fucks, but in reality waffles between being a cowardly, meek pushover, and an arrogant, impulsive dumbass from paragraph to paragraph. Her single trait that remains somewhat stable is the fact that she is repulsively horny, and not even in a funny way.
After her father figure/uncle gets executed in front of her, she is brought in by the government's military to be questioned, and instead of reacting like a normal person, she repeatedly tells the reader about how gorgeous and how sexy all of these military officers (people actively involved in the murder of her uncle that she supposedly cares about) are. Especially Cross who's totally not going to be her love interest.
Any character trait that might have been admirable (traits that are already few and far between) about Wren in the first chapter are completely gone by the time she is forcibly conscripted into the military by Cross Redden after her uncle's murder.

Don't worry I'll get to the shit-stain that is Cross Redden later.

First, I want to talk briefly about Wren in the military training course.
Wren is like many other romantasy protagonists in that she is perfect at everything. She's the best at shooting guns, she's the fastest, she's the strongest, she's the smartest, she's good at everything she tries. She has four magical psychic abilities and she's the strongest at those too. And she knows it from the first page.
When she is first conscripted into military training, she purposefully tries to fail out of it. Cross Redden refuses to cut her though, for whatever reason (he wants to fuck her), and tells Wren that her options are to join the military or to be thrown into the labor camps.
Yes, you read that correctly, LABOR CAMPS. In this book, the people with psychic powers (called Mods) are the oppressed class. They're not just second class citizens, they are actively hunted down and killed by those without powers (called the Elites). Sometimes, the Elites don't kill the Mods, and instead, the Mods are thrown into labor camps where they are forced to mine salt.
And Wren isn't forcibly conscripted into just any part of the military, she is conscripted into the Silver Block, the wing of the military that hunts down people like her, the Mods.
Wren continues to fail out of the military training until she is contacted by the Uprising, a group of Mod rebels that are severely underdeveloped. I read the whole book and I have no idea what their motives are beyond opposing the Elite-ran government.
The Uprising tells Wren that she has to get into the Silver Elite, a special force that is granted higher clearance and actively kills Mods. The Silver Elite is ran by none other than Cross Redden.
Wren now tries to actively succeed in the military training, and she does, of course, because she's good at everything. She's so good that she makes it into the Silver Elite without any real struggle at all. And, she tells the reader that she actually really likes the military, and all of these Elites that train to kill her people are actually pretty nice people once you get to know them.

In fact, this book is extremely sympathetic to the Elites at all times. All of them say extremely deplorable things about the Mods, and go virtually unchallenged by Wren or anyone else. Wren consistently refers to herself and other Mods as a monsters for their abilities, and wonders if they have any right to disrupt these nice Elites' lives at all. She even fantasizes about what if would be like to be normal and not have her powers.
May I remind you that the Elites are running Mod slave labor camps in the background of the story.
I could excuse some of this if the narrative challenged any of this ever, like even at all, but it doesn't. This book doesn't give a shit about exploring the oppression of the Mods beyond using it as set up for Wren having a "forbidden romance" with Cross Redden, the leader of the Silver Elite that hunts down her people.

Let's talk about Cross Redden.

Cross is an evil, disgusting sewer creature pulled from the depths of Satan's asshole.
He's the son of the General, the literal evil dictator of the Continent. He runs the Silver Elite, and claims that he "doesn't get involved with recruits" but from the moment that he slinks into the first chapter, he is continuously touching Wren without her consent.
Very early on in the book the following scene takes place (Wren is the first person narrator for context):

"In other words," I finish, my voice cold, "don't touch me again without my permission."
Cross's gaze never leaves my face. "Or what?"
I frown at him.
"What are you going to do, Darlington? Hit me? Go ahead. Do it."

EXCUSE ME????? How tf is the love interest in your "romance" book going to reply to a strong boundary of "don't touch me again" with "Or what?" Or WHAT????

And after this scene, do you know what Cross continues to do?
He keeps touching Wren without her permission.
There is like seven different scenes of Cross grabbing Wren from behind without consent, often times in dark hallways, and then pinning her against a door or wall. Often times he's also drunk. Not to mention, he is in a postion of immense power over her. He has the power to, at any moment, cut her from the military and ship her off to a labor camp.
Nearly all of their interactions consist of Wren telling Cross to not touch her, or that she isn't interested in him. The reader knows that she finds him really hot, but Cross literally cannot read her mind. He hears her say all of these things and continually sexualizes her, says sexual things to her, touches her sexually, calls her a whore, and talks about how hard he gets thinking about her.
It's disgusting. It's not hot.

And that's not even the worst part of his character. He is the leader of the Silver Elite, and (view spoiler)[he is a secret Mod (hide spoiler)], and when confronted by Wren over the fact that he is commiting a genocide against her people, Cross asks Wren if she has ever seen him kill a Mod.
Wren then, in her internal narration, tells the reader that, no, she hasn't ever seen him kill a Mod, in fact, instead he sends them to the labor camps, and that's "a thousand times better than burying their corpses"!!!

I'm sorry??
And you know what else? When Wren asks if he wants to work for the Uprising to free the Mods from the labor camp, he immediately, without hesitation, refuses.

The narrative of this book genuinely wants its readers to believe that sending people to labor camps where they are enslaved (slave is literally a word Wren uses to describe the people in them) is a mercy compared killing them.
There is no moment in the book where Wren pushes back against Cross and tries to change this idea, or even suggests that maybe the Mods and Elites should both have equal human rights.

The book constantly pulls the "both sides are bad" card, and at times even seems to suggest that the Elites are right for being afraid of the Mods and putting them into labor camps. If this is not obvious right wing propaganda to you, especially in our current climate, I'm concerned for you.

Cross also knowingly allows a rapist named Anson into the Silver Elite because he's "good at killing people".

Once Wren joins the Silver Elite, she is sent on a mission in her old town, where the Silver Elite is hunting down Uprising operatives.
Two of these Uprising Operatives are Wren's best friend, Tana, and Tana's father, both are Mods and described as "dark skinned" in the book.
They get arrested by the Silver Elite, and while they're being held, Anson, the rapist that Cross allowed into the Silver Elite, attempts to rape Tana. Tana kills him, and Wren pretends she killed him to cover for her friend. Cross doesn't believe her.

Cross tells Wren that her friend and her father are going to be executed, and Wren begs Cross to make a deal. Wren argues that the labor camps would be a mercy compared to execution. Cross agrees, and Wren forces her friend and her father to accept the deal, even after both of them explicitly tell her they don't want to go to the slave labor camps.

This is the opening to the chapter (chapter 42) after Tana is sent to the slave labor camps:

"I’ve barely heard from Tana in two months. It breaks my heart. I want to know how she’s doing. I want to tell her I love her. I can’t even imagine how she’s processing what Anson did to her. Alone. With nobody to talk to about it.
I’ve checked in. She links every now and then, just to tell me she’s okay, but I sense she’s not.
As Elite, I have clearance now, and I’ve checked in with the guards at the salt camp. I can access the camp’s daily logs. I can see when Tana scans into the mine, and when she scans out. They work twelve-hour days out there. I’ve seen photos of the women’s quarters. They look comfortable. Everyone gets leisure time. The food seems decent.
But a gilded cage is still a cage.
And I put her there."

Wren refers to the SLAVE LABOR CAMPS as a GILDED CAGE.

WREN SENT HER BEST FRIEND, A DARK SKINNED WOMAN, TO A SLAVE LABOR CAMP, AND THEN CALLED THE SLAVE LABOR CAMP A GILDED CAGE.

This is made only worse by the fact that in the chapters after Wren sends her supposed best friend to a slave labor camp, she goes on a silly, cutesy date with Cross.
Cross then takes Wren to his childhood home, that Wren likens to a PRISON, and she feels so bad for poor, poor Cross, who had such a hard life because he grew up in a MANSION that is so impersonal and sad with his rich DICTATOR FATHER 🥺🥺. Hasn't he lived such a hard life???
WHILE HER FRIEND IS IN A LABOR CAMP.

You actually can't make this shit up.

The book wants you to feel bad for the disgusting sleezeball that is Cross while Wren's friend that she immediately forgot about is slaving away in a labor camp that Wren sent her to.

Additionally, at the end of the book, all Mods, even ones that had previously betrayed their people to work for the government, are rounded up, tattooed on their wrists and sent to the labor camps after the Uprising attacks the General, leaving him mentally unable to rule.

The book wants to wear the trappings of the dystopian genre, but refuses to engage with the oppressive regime it uses as a backdrop, or discuss the legality, morality, history, or ethics of something like literal Labor Camps because that would get in the way of its "forbidden romance". Yet, it also has no issue sympathizing with the Elites that perpetuate and fill the labor camps. It also seems to want its readers to rationalize that labor camps are more merciful than just killing the Mods.
Why are the options death or labor camps? Wren doesn't idealize a better society, or hope for a world where both Elites and Mods can live in harmony. Instead she is satisfied with the idea that labor camps don't immediately kill the Mods, so it's more merciful than executing them.

And for anyone that liked this book or is still thinking of reading it because of the "spice" or the "romance".

WREN AND CROSS have absolutely no chemistry. Chalkboards and fingernails are a better match. Concrete and my actual face at Mach 10 is a better romance.
They don't talk. One of them walks into the room, remarks how "hot" the other is and then a shitty sex scene commences.
And not to be the smut critic, but it's not even well written smut. Watching paint dry would be a more entertaining hobby than reading Dani Francis' smut.

The plot is boring. It moves at a snail's pace and has nothing new or interesting to add. You can tell while reading that the author did not give a fuck about the world or the plot. Scenes just end when the author got bored of them.
The world does not feel lived in. There is no description. The dialogue is uninspired and stilted.
There is genuinely nothing positive I have to say about any aspect of this book.
All of the plot points are derivative, predictable, and dull. There isn't a single twist that wasn't either pulled out of the author's ass or so stupidly obvious that you couldn't guess it from Chapter 1.


It's not even entertaining. It was so bad that it wasn't even funny anymore. This wasn't even fun to hate read. I only finished because I wanted to write this review, and I don't like writing reviews about books that I don't finish.

I will not be continuing this series. I will not be giving Dani Francis any of my money, and I highly recommend that you do not either.

If you liked this book, please do not come to my town. Do not come to my city. I am HEAVILY judging you.

If you are the mysterious Dani Francis, please stop writing. We don't want your thinly veiled Nazi-sympathizing fanfic.
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