The Poppy War

I wanted to like this and I thought I would. However, there are multiple reasons I just didn't. The writing style is pretty unrefined. I feel like giving this book 5 stars, and giving something like Harry Potter 5 stars would be an insult to Rowling.

The plot is super weak. Not much clear goals. I didn't think there was any character development to speak of. I couldn't get close to any of the characters, and I didn't care about them at all.

With her writing style, early in the book, there seems to be a lot of entitled modern day thinking in her prose. There are also times in the book where I think there's a jump that didn't fit together.

For example, at one point Alton accuses Rin of talking too much to Nezha but as far as from my readers viewpoint, they had just met again after really hating each other. They were suddenly friends because they knew each other before, but they certainly didn't feel like friends that were talking too much.

There are no plot twists, and nothing surprising here. Rather cliché work. It's the authors early work, and written in a very short span.

“I wrote it over three months during the winter of 2015” – R.F. Kuang

But what baffles me is the amount of accolades earned for this. I simply don't see it being worthy, and I can only recommend you spend your time reading something else.