A Curse So Dark and Lonely

2.5 Stars

i'm not sure what to say. i feel so, so conflicted right now.

so. i thought the opening ten chapters or so were fine. then, until about page ~350 i thought that this was one of the most slow, boring books i'd ever read, and that it would be competing with The Wren In the Holly Library for my least favorite read of the year. then it finally started to pick up and i kind of liked how it ended. all of this to say, i've given this a very tentative 3 stars for now but i may reduce it to 2.5 or 2 when i have more time to think on it i have reduced my rating to 2.5.

i liked Harper and i found that i could relate to her; we both have disabilities and have experienced what it's like to have a mother diagnosed with cancer. Rhen, though, i didn't start liking him til the very end. i found him to be very confusing, like he'd say he cared about this or that but i could find nothing to support that, or otherwise was just bland in general. Grey was fine i guess.

the plot was super interesting, but it was hindered by some very slow pacing and sloppy writing, especially in the middle. the scenes changed so fast sometimes that i couldn't tell where the characters were or what was going on. sometimes, i wasn't even able to tell who's point-of-view i was reading, and i would have to flip back through the pages to check which was super annoying. one of my biggest bookish pet peeves is when an author writes multiple povs but doesn't do much to distinguish between the characters in them.

the romance though was subtle and not in the way i usually like. it was subtle as in i couldn't even tell it existed until like the last 50 pages, so i hope to see some development there in the future. also, i had no idea Grey was supposed to be a part of a love triangle between him, Harper, and Rhen until i read someone's review that pointed it out. for me, it didn't read that way at all. idk, that was just really odd.

anyways. i though this was fine overall. i'll give the next books a try too, even though i haven't heard as great things about them compared to this one. i liked the cliffhanger though, and i think i fugured out who Grey is...