#disappointing read

[teereadspgs-n-pgs]

Where The Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens

January 12th, 2021 through January 14th, 2021

[blueharlems]

That’s enough baseball twitter for the day

[viewsshewrites]

Reviewing: Death on the Island by Eliza Reid

Read time – 2 minutes Book Blurb: Trapped on a remote island by a howling storm, nine people sit down to dinner. One of them is about to die.With secrets around every corner and violent weather trapping the finite list of suspects together on the island, this locked-room mystery by internationally bestselling author Eliza Reid brings Agatha Christie and Nordic noir together in a brand-new…

Reviewing: Death on the Island by Eliza Reid

[devi0610]

Reviewing: Death on the Island by Eliza Reid

Read time – 2 minutes Book Blurb: Trapped on a remote island by a howling storm, nine people sit down to dinner. One of them is about to die.With secrets around every corner and violent weather trapping the finite list of suspects together on the island, this locked-room mystery by internationally bestselling author Eliza Reid brings Agatha Christie and Nordic noir together in a brand-new…

Reviewing: Death on the Island by Eliza Reid

[dotsandink]

A Chaotic Adventure

The Last Hour Between Worlds was a chaos fest.

I had originally picked this out on NetGalley, as I for some reason saw the cover and though, wow, that looks like a Peter Pan retelling. It was not. Instead, the blurb tells us that it's a "whip-smart adventure fantasy packed with rival guilds, reality-bending magic, and sapphic pining".

Cool. That sounds awesome.

From the start, we watch as our main character, Kembral Thorne, has just arrived at a huge, luxurious gala for the New Year. Kembral has friends, and enemies at the party, and is caught between wanting to enjoy a night out alone, and wanting to get back home to her newborn, a 2 month old named Emmi. Things take a turn though when a mass murder event takes place at the event, an alternate reality grandfather clock gongs, and Kembral realizes all of the murdered partiers are alive once again, no one remembering dying just before.

This is a very fast-paced, fantasy version of Groundhog's Day.

I am a bit torn about this story. On one hand, the plot around this clock and the party was so interesting. I was there for it. I wanted to see how the party was going to be in each layer of reality, there are 12. Each time, the party theme changed and the Kembral was facing new challenges about how to use the guests who had no knowledge of what was going on to try and counteract events that would lead up to their deaths.

On the other hand, there was no world building. We were given bits and pieces of information about this world as the plot progressed, but it was either not enough information, or was given too late.

In addition, the main character is a new mom. And she will NOT let us forget that! I was so tired of hearing about Emmi, a character that we do not interact with at all. It was exhausting hearing about how tired Kembral was because ... she was a new mom. How no one understood what it was like for Kembral to want to do her job AND be with her child. The guilt Kembral had over not thinking about her daughter for a couple pages of plot.

The romance subplot was also a rivals-to-lovers trope. The two characters had a whole history that we were again fed bits and pieces that often were too little too late. But then suddenly by the end of the story, *SPOILER that doesn't need a warning* they're fully in a deeply committed relationship.

Throughout most of this, I felt like I was reading the 3rd book in a major fantasy series, where both characters had been given deep dives into their backgrounds, along with a substantial amount of previous worldbuilding.

While The Last Hour Between Worlds is the first book a new fantasy series, I will not be continuing with the rest of the series.

2 stars

[analepsisbooks]

Disappointing Read

Aetherbound by E.K. Johnston

This book has a great cover and the synopsis was intriguing, but the story is just poorly written. There was no depth, the characters made nonsense decisions, and the timeline was way too short for the story being told. Honestly, it felt like a first draft rather than a completed book.

[wordcrawler]

Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda & Valynne E. Maetani - A Most Disappointing Read

Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda My rating: 2 of 5 stars I'm FINALLY done with this book! I was so excited going into this book, only to end up thoroughly disappointed. I really wanted to love this and I could see the potential had it been done better. In theory, I should have loved this. This has all the elements that I would've enjoyed in a book and all the elements that I tend to look for in anime. Being a fan of both, this would've been the perfect mesh. Also, the fact that by the end, I find out that this has been inspired by some of the biggest names in manga/anime, like Rumiko Takahashi's Inuyasha (which is my heart and soul), CLAMP's xxxHolic, Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, to name a few, I really SHOULD HAVE loved this. But I didn't. I guess it just all came down to poor execution. The first glaring issue for me was the writing. It all started when the line "releasing the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding" appeared. And in the space of 5 short chapters, that same line was repeated. I have read so many books these past couple of years, and this is the first time in a long while that I've encountered that line again—it just took me out of the story. Because this was published this year and that line made it through is surprising. From there, it became obvious to me how cliched the writing was. The writing was also overly repetitive. The book is fairly short, so I didn't need constant recaps of what happened a few chapters ago. The annoying bit is that these recaps were mainly used to reinstate just how "different from other girls" our main character is. It also affected the pacing of the entire story, which I'll get to later on. My second issue is that I just didn't care about the main character—nor any of the characters, for that matter. I couldn't find myself able to empathize with Kira despite all the shit she went through. Her moments of grief and sorrow just felt hollow and shallow to me. Because that's what they are—just moments. You have her inner monologues saying how much she misses him and that she's so sad, but that's it. Because the next thing you know, all her attention is focused on trying to save the world. It would've added some depth to her had her actions been for avenging her grandfather, and in consequence, saved the world. I also couldn't care less about her strained relationship with her parents because she doesn't seem to care anyway. She barely even mentions them and doesn't even have any longings for their affection. Out of everything she went through, the only time that I actually felt any sort of empathy for her was when she was getting bullied. While on the topic of not caring, I could've easily bumped up my rating to 3 stars if this managed to make me like the romance (because I'm basic like that). But it also failed at that! Again, I just didn't care. I didn't expect this to be focused on romance but at least give me some banters between our main couple just to make me feel something. It was like the romance was set up for convenience's sake only. My last issue is the pacing. I have read shorter books with more complex plots than this yet somehow this still ended up feeling rushed. This goes back to my first issue of being handed a recap after almost every chapter instead of expounding on the overall plot. Those pages could've been used to focus more on the preparations, or better yet the importance of the Shinigamis's roles, in the upcoming war. To end this review on a high note, what I can definitely say that I love about this book are all of the Japanese lore and mythology. The Japanese have some of the most interesting (and also creepiest) mythological creatures which are what made me pick up this book. To read about the creatures that I'm already familiar with and to also learn more about them and the myths was already an experience in itself which is why I still gave this 2 stars. View all my reviews

[dargeereads]

Wyoming Brave by Diana Palmer

2 stars

Okay, I  just can’t quit reading Diana Palmer books, and I know what I am getting with  them, and they are all basically the same variation of the same story, with  all the really bad stereo-types and toxicity, and they’re preachy, but I did  figure something out with this book. I like suspense in the stories. I like  the quirkiness of the side characters, though I hate it in the main  characters. And for someone who is all preachy and one-step away from a  religious romance, the sex scenes are pretty hot. So for all the badness that  Diana Palmer books are, and will likely continue to be, I will probably keep  reading them

The best part of this book, the mystery and the animals. The worst  part of this book, the formulatic, predictable, overdone, storyline. Grumpy,  relationship burned, toxic male. Virgin, horrible childhood, naive female.  Now, once they figure things out and legally can fool around, they’re pretty  hot together. But the best part really was the mystery, and that really  involved the side characters and not the main ones