Nikki
Once again, another book out of this series that I just couldn't like. This time however I can at least put into words why certain books in this series are two stars for me:
The storyline is basically the same as the other ones. which wouldn't really be a problem if the characters could carry it but...
The female protagonists: all feel the same, sort of bland and virginal, and the women have this feeling of catty fake feminist to them that makes them unlikeable.
The male protagonists: over-possessive(as are the women), and are over-the-top attractive (it's okay if your male protag doesn't have the most gorgeous face, the biggest dick, and have women falling at his feet).
Now spoilers for some of the things in this book in particular that annoyed me. Gabby kept talking about her 'inner fourteen year old' whenever she was feeling attracted to Adam, it's weird to me that this woman has/needs a 'inner' fourteen year old to tell her it's okay to be horny. Kinda weird. She is extremely immature about her attraction to him as well, acting like that fourteen year old she kept mentioning with how she handles her jealousy of other women because they dare look at Adam with lust.Adam seems very immature, especially for someone that is over a thousand years old, he is jealous like an abuser, doesn't even like other men in the room with her. He assaults her when they first meet and no one cares. Then he steals a pair of her underwear, of which he keeps in his pocket, and this is supposed to be 'okay' because she kept one of his shirts. Then he later nearly kidnaps her to force her to take the life elixir and hold her hostage, until the elixir removes her soul so she'll no longer care about having a soul in the first place, but this is 'okay' because he didn't do it and he loves her. There was a few other things that rubbed me wrong throughout this story but I will say it's very readable, and fast pace.
I only have one book left in this series I haven't read and I hope it's a four or five star but I'm not holding my breath either.
Better than I thought it would be, though I do feel like Beth was only there to die.
I was a bit exhausted by all the ‘glass half full' mentally throughout the novel, as if everything works out for the best in the end, and everything is a lesson in spiritualty. I guess I just prefer a bit of wallowing in novels.
It did feel a bit like 1860s Gilmore Girls, what with the close knit family and overall upbeat mindset, even in hardship.
It really wasn't one solid thing that made me not enjoy this, just like a collection of little things that just didn't meet up with what I was expecting and made it a bit disappointing.
I didn't like Jafar all that much, he was just a little too in the middle of good guy/bad guy and felt kinda passive. I mean yeah he's being a dom and stuff, talks a big game but both times Ali shows up he's not there, and he doesn't really have any development, he wanted to bang Jasmine in the beginning and he's banging her in the end, that's about all that changes for him.
The time period felt weird to me since I was expecting it to be set in Agrabah, then suddenly there's zippers and computers... I get why it's brought into a modern age, but at that point it might as well be any contemporary erotica with Sarah and Will as the protags, you know? I thought it was going to be following a bit more with the Aladdin narrative, like: Ali shows up, Jasmine's into him, they start courting, then Jafar gets jealous, realizes he's into her, she realizes she's into him, yada yada, that kinda stuff.
Her calling him Daddy, and him calling her Baby girl, it felt off. Like I get it's part of their kink but it still didn't feel natural to me.
Whatever, if I keep going it's just gonna be more nitpicky and honestly, most people will probably enjoy this just fine. I'll try the next one at some point, now that I got the feel of the world, hopefully it was just that this one wasn't for me.
3.5 stars
the story was interesting, obviously, it was based on a already established premise: the story of Tarzan. I liked the characters and the writing held my attention for most of the story. I'd say it's worth the read if the premise sounds interesting to you and you don't mind some, kind of plausible, insta-love.
However there were a few things that really pulled me out of the story and lowered the stars for me:
•Thorne's speech goes from caveman to surprisingly eloquent in like two pages and then would switch back. Also if Bwanbale taught him swahili and helped him better his english why wouldn't he have taught him to use first person pronouns? especially when that's one of the first and easiest things one learns when studying languages.•To me, the mystical nature of the jungle, and Thorne's ability to know exactly what the animals are 'saying', felt weird in an otherwise contemporary non-magical world•Why didn't Eden's parents play into this story beyond one phone call with her mom? For a story with such a heavy emphasis on family and found family, you'd think Thorne meeting her seemingly loving family would/could be a touching moment.
Really solid sequel to ‘an ember in the ashes', glad it picked right up where the last one ended. I would've given five stars but truthfully I didn't feel connected to the characters (i.e. I felt very dispassionate), maybe because of the consistent pov changes I never had enough time to be fully immersed in the characters' minds? I felt the same for the first book too, so maybe it's just the way they're written that leaves me unaffected. Either way, the plot is good and keeps the story flowing smoothly and it's worth the read.
I did see Keenan being a bad guy coming from the jump, which is a little disappointing. I generally enjoy when the 'secret' villains are more subtle. As a fan of romance in general, and fantasy romance especially, I'm glad that it's a slow slow burn between Laia and Elis, too often the relationship feels so rushed (as it did with Laia and Keenan) that it makes me lose all investment with the story. Which is why I'm glad Keenan was a baddie, 'cause otherwise the whole plotline with them would've felt too ridiculously short even though it was over the course of months. also RIP Izzi, I wish it was Helene instead, 'cause boy did I disliked her chapters the most.
I liked the writing, and I enjoyed the main characters but, I didn't connect to the ‘plot' aspect of this.
I don't really like fan-fiction, or I guess more accurately I'm not interested in fan-fiction, nor stories inspired by other stories. It's a detraction for me, whenever it's mentioned as a selling point for a book. And same goes for a story being told in other stories. So all in all, it's a credit for this book that I enjoyed it as much as I did.
I thought I'd like this but, I had the hardest time getting myself to pay attention to the story. It's well written and I understand why this is loved, but I couldn't bring myself to care about the characters or plot, maybe this is my fault ‘cause I read this in the middle of reading another fantasy book that I do like a lot and so every time I pulled myself away to read this, I just wanted to read the other instead.
But then again, I do recall not being interested in this book as a kid too, so maybe it's just not the story for me.
It was fine; Another one of those if I'd read it when it came out I probably would've enjoyed it more type books. Can't really fault this book for the plot feeling predictable since it came out before most of the other books that made this style of dystopian tiresome but, that doesn't mean I can't sigh over another “teenage orphans (who fall in love) try to rise against fascist government” plotline.
Don't see myself reading any further in the series but I understand why people like this.
It's really been an up and down with this series for me. Some I love, others I barely get through without DNF-ing. I almost want to say I didn't like this one because I've been reading them back to back and I think I'm getting burnt out but I can't help but feel that if it had been more interesting, or different then the others, maybe I wouldn't have been so over this story by the halfway mark.
This book has no plot.
or, I guess, I wish that the plot that is kinda, sorta here was actually worth reading about. I didn't care about the triad and I don't feel as though the main characters did either.
I care more about character than plot in any book and I wish there was a character that made reading this entire thing worth it but there wasn't. The characters weren't good, and I don't mean they weren't nice people. I mean I thought they were just awful to read from the perspective of. There isn't enough sad backstories in the world to make me care about any of them. I didn't care what happened to them, any of them could've dropped dead and I wouldn't have batted an eye.
I feel like this is meant to be a stepping stone for older YA readers to get into adult dark romance. But it's not a good introduction, in my opinion. The dialog felt a immature, too many bad one-liners and too rushed whilst also being too long. This is a long ass book, 70 chapters, the characters didn't have to be banging by chapter 17. The insta-love is so, so jarring. It went from ‘I could kill her and I wouldn't care' to ‘I hope our enemies never learn about her ‘cause it'll destroy us if anything happens to her' in a week. Like I said, this is a long book no need to rush it, jesus. If I have to read the word Vipers ever again, it'll be too soon.
The best part of the book was the sex scenes and after awhile even that wasn't enough to keep me interested...
I really wanted to like this more than I did.
It just doesn't hold up over time; it was written 20+ years ago and it shows.
For me Hawk was a bit too one dimensional, good at everything, excessively attractive, and no real flaws. I thought for a moment it was going to explore his trauma of being used as the court courtesan but it never went there and just glazed over it, and pretty much said it was fine ‘cause now he's really good in bed... like I said, this book is very much a product of it's time.
The villain/main conflict was really ‘meh' and predictable. I did actually like Adrienne, her present time (1997) story was an odd choice but I guess it works for a good reason to want to stay in the 1500s.
so yeah, it was just kind of a forgettable read for me. I have read others in this series that I liked much more so I'll just keep going and hope the next will be better.
I'm gonna be real, I thought that this was going to be the last in the series so I was really expecting that this whole story would be resolved by the end of it. So part of my disappointment is because there's going to be another book, this storyline already feels too drawn out. It's been essentially the same story for three books now, Poppy believes she's one thing, finds out she's another. I would assume that the next book should be the last (or at least last of this plot) since it's teasing a war but at this point I don't even know if I care to read it since it'll probably have some contrived ‘surprise' moment, like the others have, that twist the story around and suddenly they're taking a whole book just to take down a city or something.
I do like the story don't get me wrong, I just think it's been drawn out for no real good reason. Another complaint I have is that the dialog is so YA; the story feels like it's meant to be adult high fantasy but the dialog is early 2010's teen show. It clashes a bit for me and takes me out of the story when otherwise seemingly adult people start talking like they're modern day teenagers. I have issues with Poppy and Casteels' relationship dynamic too, but I really don't feel like writing another whole-ass paragraph to explain that, so I'll let it be since in my opinion it improved a little by the end of the book.
Ugh maybe I would've felt different about this if I'd read this when it came out but, ten years later... I'm just annoyed at the characters, at the plot, at the dialog.
The plot feels so dated and honestly, rather stupid and contrived. What society is going to scientifically alter it's population just to remove their ability to feel love? It's ridiculous, it's not like not feeling love would keep them from uprisings and that removing all poetry/classic romantic literature (except Romeo and Juliet conveniently) would do anything of value. The characters are insipid and predicable most of the time, and I just didn't want to be in Lena PoV after awhile. I understand Alex and Lena are suppose to be in ‘young love' but it's too cringy and too dramatic to be romantic. The ‘we've got to runaway together and then we'll be happy' cliché is so overdone.
This book was just kinda... bleh. I didn't hate it but I didn't feel any really positive things for it either.
I will say the use of ‘shuck' and ‘klunk' instead of any actually swears actually started to annoy me.
I understand this was aimed at a younger age range, but as an adult I would've rather there had been no swears than a constant stream of faux curse words and, to be honest,
even if I had read this when I was in its age range I think I would've been annoyed by the faux curse words. It feels like something media for kids under ten would do and this book is definitely aimed for pre-teens/teens.
I liked the first book so much but, god, almost everything bothered me in this one.
Maybe it's the that Kiera is still so very, very traumatized by her ex but still gets into a relationship with Theo in a literal day.
It was trying to walk down a more serious route (with the abuse from the ex and her constant recitement of round objects to help her calm down) whilst still trying to keep this levity that didn't feel right.
I went into this thinking I wasn't going to enjoy it that much, mostly because a couple other books on this YA list, that I'm slowly going through, haven't been all that great, coughGracelingcough, and admittedly, for the first few chapters I was checked out because I genuinely thought it was going to be the same as the other newer high fantasy YA that've been on this list.
But it surprised me and I found myself actually invested in the story and completing the whole thing at 3 a.m. because it kept me intrigued till the last page.
After looking through the reviews I feel like a lot of people's critiques are that they found the heroine to be too ‘not like other girls' and I get why they feel that way however, I felt like that trope was done in a way that I didn't find Celaena to be annoying. It wasn't like crazy good assassin from birth, somehow gets plucked off the street by prince to compete in competition, being a crazy good assassin was something that took years of training and didn't come easy and she wasn't plucked off the streets, she was dragged out of a death camp where she was imprisoned.
Another criticism was too much show not enough tell, that one has merit in some aspects but, I was okay with it. It allowed for the story to move along. Calaena was malnourished and emaciated from being in the camp how are you going to ‘show' that she's highly trained right away, in a way relevant to the plot? could it be done? sure, maybe, I'm not a writer, but I was fine with just being told she's a ‘amazing assassin' until it could actually be shown.
Low key feel that a sizable portion of bad reviews are from people who just don't like Sarah. J. Maas, and hate read this, Which, hey, whatever floats your boat man, if that's not the case then I'd be surprised. It's a really good YA fantasy (I'm looking at you, the reviews that thought it was going to be GoT, why would you think that? GoT is 600+ pages of adult fantasy told from like 15 PoVs. If someone told you this was gonna be that, then they don't read fantasy at all). I don't know, maybe it's because I didn't read the synopsis or watch any in depth reviews before I started it but, I thought this was an intriguing story and paced really well. I thought it better than most other YA fantasy that've read.
I'd give it a solid 4 1/2 stars.