I recently felt the impulse to re-read the Needle Craft Mystery Series. I’d first found the series by Monica Ferris a few years ago, and burned through it all pretty quickly. I decided it was time to revisit them.
This time, I decided to start with book one.
It’s an excellent launch to the series, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a quick listen; the audio-book is less than 8 hours. I spent…
Altered || Gennifer Albin || Crewel World #2 || 387 pages
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Top 3 Genres: Young Adult / Dystopia / Fantasy
Synopsis: After a daring escape to Earth from Arras, sixteen-year-old Adelice Lewys thought she would finally be in control of her own destiny. But Earth is not abandoned, as she'd always been taught it was. It's inhabited by survivors waging a war against Arras, and Adelice is being called upon to harness her phenomenal power and help win a deadly war. But nothing on Earth is as it seems. Everyone has secrets, and those secrets are driving her away from Jost, the boy she loves, and into the waiting arms of his brother, Erik. Torn between two brothers and two worlds, Adelice must decide what and who she's fighting for, before it's too late.
Finished: November 2nd, 2018.
Progress: 10 / 50. 20% complete.
My Rating: ★★☆☆☆. [2/5]
My Review: [Under the read more - NOT SPOILER FREE]
Three months. That's how long it's taken me to finish this. THREE MONTHS. Holy shit I've really fallen out of reading.
And it doesn't help that so much about this book was a big pile of MEH. Like – I didn't want to abandon it, because I had spent so long on it and I was vaguely curious about how the book ends, and plus I remember how much I enjoyed the first book. And the worldbuilding and the idea the book is based off of really is interesting. But, shit. Either my tastes have changed drastically since I read that first book, or this one is just that much shitter.
The good news is, through the course of this book, it gradually reminded me of what happened in the first book, and I started remembering why I cared to continue the series, so things made sense. The bad news is, just about everything else. The plot felt disjointed and scattered, the main character is a "strong female character" and is totally one-dimensional and unlikable (and not in the good way, the got on my fucking nerves way), the love triangle is a LOVE TRIANGLE and I have no patience for that, and dialogue and interaction between characters continuously felt SO, SO incredibly unnatural and unrealistic throughout the entire book. Especially at the end climax scene. Like.. what the fuck was THAT. None of that was realistic at ALL.
I just. This was not good. I managed to get through it but this was not a good book. It was poor on average, mediocre at best. It tried so hard to make me care at MC's sudden character development and able to actually control her skills when it mattered (cause of course she could) and want to continue on to the next book to see the grand finale of how it all ends but I just don't really give a shit. I don't even really care enough to keep writing this.
I'm sorry for the poor review – some people may have actually liked this book and decided to finish the series, and overall this definitely isn't even close to being amongst the worst books I've ever read – but I'm just so ready to move on to something new, and hopefully, something actually better than boring gray mediocrity.
Altered || Gennifer Albin || Crewel World #2 || 387 pages
---------------------------------------------------------
Top 3 Genres: Young Adult / Dystopia / Fantasy
Synopsis: After a daring escape to Earth from Arras, sixteen-year-old Adelice Lewys thought she would finally be in control of her own destiny. But Earth is not abandoned, as she'd always been taught it was. It's inhabited by survivors waging a war against Arras, and Adelice is being called upon to harness her phenomenal power and help win a deadly war. But nothing on Earth is as it seems. Everyone has secrets, and those secrets are driving her away from Jost, the boy she loves, and into the waiting arms of his brother, Erik. Torn between two brothers and two worlds, Adelice must decide what and who she's fighting for, before it's too late.
