This is a spoiler-free review!
I saw one clip of a scene from Gabriel's Inferno on TikTok, which lead me to binge watching the six available movies on Passionflix in one day. Once I found out that the next movie is being released in two months, I just knew that I needed to read the books. I will say that by watching the movie first followed by reading the book, I was so surprised to see how book-accurate the movie actually was. It was as if they simply changed the format from a novel to script, and kept nearly everything that happened in the book.
There is a ton of POV changing in the book that is not explicitly stated, which was throwing me off as I continued reading. We have Julia and Gabriel's perspectives, but then would randomly get Paul's POV in the middle of a paragraph when he was talking to Julia or when they were in seminar. Since the chapters do not have a designated character's perspective attached to them, you have to go in prepared to listen to anyone leading the story. You can also totally tell that this started out as Twilight fan fiction -- I was able to point out so many scenes that felt like replicas of Bella and Edward's story.
I actually had a lot of fun reading this, despite knowing everything that was going to happen due to my movie-watching over the rainy weekend. Julia is a shy student at the University of Toronto working on her Master's degree, on her way to become a Dante specialist. Gabriel is her Dante seminar professor, riddled with a dark past and an unknowing connection to Julia that he cannot quite place. There is enough tension between the two of them to cause a building to collapse under it, but as they become more acquainted with one another, we see that tension turn from distain to admiration and desire. However, their relationship and the way that they spoke to and about one another felt cheesy -- no one actually calls someone an angel out loud to their family, it was cringy reading a lot of their outside interactions.
Gabriel is extremely hot-tempered when it comes to Julia and anyone who basically interacts with her that may resemble them being interested in her. There are a number of times in the book where Julia is out with Gabriel and his sister, Rachel, and he notices her speaking to a guy and stomps on over to her, asking why she would be talking to them. Each time, she is typically just helping someone out, and since her and Gabriel are not together at any of these points, he looks crazed. He keeps secrets about his past from Julia because for some reason, he thinks she is the picture of purity and that knowing anything bad about him will ruin her forever? There is so much emphasis on the fact that she is shy and a virgin, you would think she would have won a prize for being a saint. You can tell that this book was written by a man through the way he places a level of emphasis on Julia's innocence and Gabriel's supposed torrid past.
Despite the excessive amount of times that both Julia and Gabriel bring up the strict non-fraternization policy at the university, they sure seem to love to run around the city together and be in each other's company whenever they can. I was genuinely surprised when they were not found out during one of their many interactions in broad daylight. They are running around town using the excuse that if anyone sees them together, that they are discussing Julia's thesis topic, since he is her advisor. Personally, if I saw my classmate having a candle lit dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant, her thesis being the topic of discussion would be the last thing on my mind. I also could not stand the emails and text messages that they would send each other -- they were cringe-worthy and did not feel genuine, almost as if they were using classics references in an attempt to impress one another.
Paul, a doctoral student who sits next to Julia in the Dante seminar, constantly refers to her as Rabbit, which he does not ever stop doing and does not explain to Julia why he calls her that. Personally, his little rabbit fetish was driving me insanely and was flashing red flags over his head any time that he interacted with Julia. He becomes very protective of her in the sense that he is romantically interested in Julia and well Julia... she just wants a friend in a new city. It is alluded throughout the book that she has been hurt in the past by a past boyfriend, and as the story goes on, we learn more and more about what exactly she had been through before coming to Toronto.
Julia's relationship to her father is very complicated, and with the extensive background the author gives us about her childhood and issues with familial relationships, we see that played out when she has to talk to her father. He does not seem to respect her boundaries at all, and basically drops her at any chance something else he deems more important comes up. It was disheartening to see her constantly being left behind or her feelings being dismissed by him just because he thinks he knows better.
This is an utterly pretentious book that may leave the reader thinking that they do not understand the context in which Julia and Gabriel speak in. Most of the time, they love using Dante and Beatrice metaphors and references to talk about themselves with each other and with other people. They also have a knack of Botticelli, one of my favorite painters, so I was very much enjoying any time he was brought into conversation. If you do not have a background in classics or Italian studies, you might be unfamiliar with topics discussed, but otherwise I think it should be easy for anyone to understand. It is pretty much just the basic classics knowledge you would find in an article online or just looking up a summary of Dante's works. I was already pretty familiar with the work they discussed, so it was very interesting to see how heavily it impacted Julia and Gabriel's relationship.
I think there was a different level of categorization of being erotic when this book was first published -- if you are looking for something that has a ton of sex scenes, this is not the book for you. Everything in this book is more on the sensual side, with the added touch of high-tension scenes between Julia and Gabriel that fall into the category of just being erotic in essence but not fully played out on the page. However, I think that was a good choice by the author, given Julia's past and Gabriel's constant worry that he will ruin her.
Gabriel's Inferno Parts I, II, and III, along with Gabriel's Rapture Parts I, II, and III are now available to watch through streaming on Passionflix.
You can add Gabriel's Inferno and the rest of the series on Goodreads now, and follow the author to stay up to date on releases and publications.
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