Dacia
Sweet story, but I had a hard time understanding why every rich bachelor in London was so in love with the main character, who seemed wholly devoid of a personality.
This book had two sort-of mysteries going on at once. One was kind of interesting, one was not. Sadly, the latter took up most of the pages, along with overlong descriptions of the weather, the furniture layout of every room, people's hair, what people were eating, how they were eating it, etc. But on the flip side, the author added very few descriptions of characters' personalities, thoughts and pasts, giving so little insight and character building that by the end I did not care a lick for any of them and wouldn't have minded a bit if any or even all of them got shot in the big cliched hostage shoot-out finale.
I flew through this book. But. I wanted it to be more. The time and place are new to me, and I was super into it, but a few things held me back from full-on love:
1. Nothing gets resolved in this book. It just ends, and you're supposed to jump straight to the next book, I guess. I am tempted, but ultimately am not enough in love to move book #2 up on my to-read list. I feel like if I read your very long book, you could at least give me something besides a preview of the next damn book at the end. Or, better yet, put it all in one book, even if it is 1,000 pages long!
2. This book needs a better editor. Grammatical errors abound and also some information is repeated too frequently. Could be much tidier.
So, what did I enjoy? The heroine, the languages, the scene, the gradual bloom of love and magic. But the end left me wanting..though not enough to delve any further, for now.
Still have more thinking to do on how I feel about this one.
All this said, I'd still recommend this book. It's a solid three to four stars and worth your time ... If you are ok with leaving things unresolved at the end.
Why is it that I often get almost totally through a book before realizing it's part of a series, and no plot wrap-up is coming my way? Anyway, I liked a lot about this book, and I am not a history fan by any means, so that kind of surprised me. It started out thin, then got really good ... then felt a little thin again at the end.
That said, I cannot recommend this book to anyone trying to go sober. The extensive and heavily descriptive wine tasting scenes left me jonesing for a glass – even when I was reading in the morning.
Fun, quick, light read. Everything gets wrapped up pretty quickly and neatly in the end, which actually surprised me, since this is a series. But I like some resolution in my mystery books, so I'll take it.
Well done historical fiction, even if you're not a huge Jane Austen fan. Definitely interesting to consider the below stairs action in one of her most famous stories, though. The writing is very well done, I only got a bit disappointed because I thought the ending was going to surprise me, but in the end everything gets wrapped up in a mostly pretty bow.
I really enjoyed the first half of this book–it played out like a well-done mystery and I enjoyed the magazine clippings, web pages, etc. ... but then this paranormal element pops up and it all veered off the rails for me. When I hit 70% I switched to speed-reading just to find out what happens in the end. Although we never exactly do find out anything concrete. There's multiple Scooby Doo-type endings going on here, plus a few red herrings and loose ends, but it's definitely not a bad book, and certainly worth a read if you're looking for a unique mystery that absolutely avoids formula.
Started slow, but got a bit better. Unfortunately, any potential conflict in the book was wrapped up quickly and neatly. I feel like I read “I got away, but just barely,” more than once. Lots of telling, not so much showing. At the end, I totally expected a big showdown between The Good Guy and The Bad Guy ... but it never happened. There's a distinct lack of action that I'm sure will be made up for in the screenplay.
I give it 3 1/2 stars, but that extra half is just because the author is from Austin.
Seems like the author was so bent on shocking us all, she had to include some plot points that were truly hard to swallow. And it was so obvious the BIG REVEAL was coming at the very end, I just kind of got tired of waiting for it and cared very little when it finally arrived and was...not really that shocking at all.
One of those books that starts off slow, then everything happens all at once. But it gets a solid 3 1/2 to 4 stars for me because it held my interest, and I am a sucker for Kearsley's romantic histories.
I just love Susanna Kearsley's writing. I love the way she uses magic and mysticism without going totally overboard. The way she writes relationships is also great–I enjoy watching love grow organically, rather than two people just seeing each other and being all BAM! SOULMATES! Kearsley's romances are much more realistic and believable, which makes them more enjoyable for me.
I've read several of her books, and I think this one is my second favorite of hers. Definitely recommended as a quick read full of interesting history and a sweet little love story. The only trouble with Kearsley is that she'll make you want to book a flight to Scotland post haste.
I was expecting so much more. But, to be fair, all of the glowing reviews I read for this book praised the descriptive language and the scene-setting, which were fantastic. But the characters were empty and the plot was poorly developed, barely explained and hardly even carried out to an end. Throw in the timeline jumping with no true payoff, and I'm giving this somewhere between 2 1/2 and 3 stars. It was a pretty quick read, at the least.
Fast-paced thriller that has excellent character development, which so many plot-driven thrillers lack. Enjoyable if you're a fan of Gillian Flynn, Kate Atkinson and Tana French.
The one thing that annoyed me about this book was the constant teasing about what was to come. The narrator has a secret, and she wants you to know she has one, so she keeps reminding you of it, even though you know you won't find out what the secret is until the very end. It's kind of like watching a movie when someone has told you to expect “a twist,” and then you're distracted, looking for the twist, trying to figure out what it might be. In this book, the foreshadowing felt heavy handed and unnecessary. I would've kept reading anyway just for the characters.
I put off reading this book because the main character's name is ridiculous. But it had four stars, so I eventually gave it a try.
I almost DNFed, but stuck it out because it's short. It wasn't good, though. The main character speaks only in snarky quips, which are funny, but we never get any insight into her emotions, what she's thinking, or who she is/what she wants. So in the end I just didn't care what happened to her. Does she die? Does the get the guy? Whatever.
It felt so much like a setup for other books, too, and that annoys me. Even in a series, I feel like each book should be able to stand on its own as a good, unique work, not just a prelude, but this one didn't meet that goal for me. Two stars because I learned the phrase “Is a frog's ass water tight?” from this book, but that was really the highlight for me.
Wanted a quick murder mystery and picked this up on a whim. This will be my first and last DD Warren mystery – I found the detective completely devoid of personality. To boot, the plot and characters were predictable. Snooze.
Didn't really get interesting until page 300 ... and then it was over. Too much world building and way too much overly obvious early exposition. Can't imagine reading the sequel because the character profiles and motives seemed vague and undeveloped to me. 2.5 stars
Giving up on this one. On first glance, I should love everything about this book, but after 100 pages, I'm still finding it a slog. I've had it for weeks and keep putting it down to read other stuff, and the library wants it back, so into the DNF pile it goes.
The writing in this book was so enjoyable that the subject matter hardly mattered to me, honestly. It was largely unpredictable, which is an unexpected and welcome delight in mystery novels. The plot was a little bit close to a Linwood Barclay book I read last year, so that kind of killed my interest a bit, although the writing here is much better than in any Barclay I've read.
In the end, I'd give it 3 1/2 to 4 stars, subtracting points for the slight unbelievability and never-mentioned loose ends that left me a bit frustrated, combined with the near lack of a mostly likable character, especially the central characters. I was just not invested enough in their well-being to care too much how things ended for them.
So much better than the first one. The main character in this book got on my nerves, too, but managed to redeem herself to me just before I gave up on her.
Reads like two separate books slapped together. The first half is the same love story you've read a million times before, then once the characters get together, the book's all “Hey, look! Vampires!” And then there's a trite vampire plot where the vampire is going to kill everybody ... and then he doesn't. The end.
Found myself rushing through the conclusion just to be done with it and move on to something else. If the author had actually tried to weave the love story and the action together, this could have been a three-star book for me.
I found this book so poorly written, I almost gave up. But it was short, so I hung in there. The characters are dull and flat, and the whole book leads up to a less-than-exciting 20-page ending scene that is meant to be exciting, but, well, isn't.
The worst part for me was how the writer kept having her characters ask questions at the end of each chapter. “What did he want from her? Was this an omen? How was she going to get herself out of this mess?” I think it's a weak writing technique (don't tell me what questions I should be asking, that's insulting. form the story so that I ask my own questions.) and it is way overused in this book.
This was my first Melissa de la Cruz ... and it'll be my last.
Laurie Notaro is funny. She's always funny. Her books are like sit coms in story form. I only wish she'd cut back on the fat jokes.