I enjoyed the first book in this series so I’m disappointed that I can’t get into this one. Other reviewers have loved it so I feel like I’m DNF @ 24%
I enjoyed the first book in this series so I’m disappointed that I can’t get into this one. Other reviewers have loved it so I feel like I’m missing out on something potentially wonderful.
I think this is either a case of it’s not you, it’s me, or it’s not the right book for me at the moment. Rather than continuing to struggle I’m going to set it aside for now.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor Books for the opportunity to read this book....more
I was intrigued by this book’s blurb and was looking forward to a spooky read. The idea of a town that’s inherently evil, with the scares taDNF at 26%
I was intrigued by this book’s blurb and was looking forward to a spooky read. The idea of a town that’s inherently evil, with the scares taking place in a graveyard, school and mortuary, sounded like my kind of fun. Unfortunately it’s not working for me at all, which is really disappointing. Even worse, I’m currently surrounded by reviewers who loved this book so I feel like I’m missing out on something wonderful.
I’m finding the story quite disjointed and haven’t been able to form an emotional connection with any of the characters that have been introduced so far.
I acknowledge that I’m reading an advanced copy of this book so hopefully proofreading and editing will fix a lot of the problems I’ve experienced. The punctuation is all over the place. An abundance of commas exist where they shouldn’t and they’re missing where they’re needed. While they could easily be fixed, here are only a couple of the many sentences that frustrated me:
Whether that was Lilly or not, William wasn’t waiting around to find out, he bolted.
That old Ford was a sight for sore eyes, he could now breathe easy.
An extraordinary feeling of happiness and expectations filled the inhabitants, this was their holiday.
I know my punctuation and grammar are nowhere near perfect either, but I’d definitely want someone to clean up my writing if I ever expected people to pay for it.
There was some phrasing that felt awkward:
These were ghosts that were disturbed for keeping evil obsessions hidden.
they were blood-like red in color.
It was an erotic transformation, from a woman of beauty to a fierce beast of uncontrollable hatred for mankind.
This was a horror unlike any before; no man had ever survived such a terror and lived to tell about it.
My jaw dropped (and I almost threw in the towel right then and there) when I found this sentence in the second chapter:
Giving birth was akin to a gang-rape.
Characters have also called one another “homo”, “nuts” and “retarded”.
If the story had grabbed me I wouldn’t have been as focused on typos, including “lightening” instead of “lightning”, as well as the other nitpicks. I hate to admit defeat where any book is concerned but I can’t travel any further with this one.
I’d encourage you to read some 4 and 5 star reviews before deciding if this is the book for you or not. I’m definitely an outlier here.
Content warnings (so far) include (view spoiler)[death by suicide, child abuse and sexual assault (hide spoiler)].
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Black Rose Writing for the opportunity to read this book....more
I absolutely hate it when I can’t finish a book. I fell in love with this book’s cover, then the blurb sealed the deal for me. My anticipatiDNF at 44%
I absolutely hate it when I can’t finish a book. I fell in love with this book’s cover, then the blurb sealed the deal for me. My anticipation grew during the prologue, especially when I came across this little marvel:
This was a gateway to a realm of merciless darkness, of beautiful horrors and bloodthirsty nightmares.
I usually love banter between characters but a lot of it hasn’t worked for me so far. It’s gotten to the point that if a particular character calls the princess a ‘brat’ one more time I’m going to want to throw my Kindle at a wall. I’m also not a fan of all of the flirting, especially when it closely follows (view spoiler)[a massacre that’s supposed to be devastating (hide spoiler)].
The language is inconsistent at times, with characters wandering from “brat” to “‘morrow” to “my bad”. It switches between so many points of view that I’ve lost count and although I haven’t read a lot of fantasy book it feels like I already know all of the individual elements in this story too well.
I’m feeling really defeated right now. I know I’m surrounded by so many ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reviews and I had planned to be writing one of them.
I hope to finish this book in the future but I’m having to slog my way through it at the moment and if I keep doing this I’m only going to be looking for faults that may or may not exist.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the opportunity to read this book....more
Okay, so maybe I’m just not supposed to read Markus Zusak’s books. I wanted to care, I tried to care, but I don’t care and I’m feeling quiteDNF at 22%
Okay, so maybe I’m just not supposed to read Markus Zusak’s books. I wanted to care, I tried to care, but I don’t care and I’m feeling quite un-Australian about the whole experience. I was interested in the mother’s backstory and probably would have enjoyed this book had she been the focus but I had no interest in her sons. They’re the kind of rough and tumble boys I avoided in high school and it turns out I’m still not interested in their fights or why they think it’s a good idea to steal letterboxes when they’re drunk.
Perhaps if I’d managed to make it to the end of the book I may have found a soft spot for at least one of the brothers but I found getting through each chapter a slog and finally decided that life’s too short to turn yourself inside out trying to like a book simply because you think you should.
From what I can tell from trying and failing to love this book, it eventually boils down to the following sentence:
Clay builds a bridge.
When I raised my white flag it was clear that Clay was going to physically build a bridge with his father and in doing so I’m guessing he also manages to build a bridge over the chasm separating father from sons. I know so many people love this book already and wish I was one of them but I admit defeat. If you read this book I really hope you love it....more
Trigger Warnings include sexual assault, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Muslim statements, death of a dog, trafficking, grooming and despiDNF at 80%
Trigger Warnings include sexual assault, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Muslim statements, death of a dog, trafficking, grooming and despicable behaviour by despicable humans on drugged victims.
First, I want to point out that this book currently has a high proportion of 4 and 5 star reviews so please don’t just read my review and decide based on that alone that this book is not for you. I’d encourage you to read positive reviews as well and then decide for yourself if it’s the book for you or not.
I requested a review copy of Pendle Fire from NetGalley (thank you very much to NetGalley and Bloodhound Books for the opportunity) and I was looking forward to reading it, mostly because I wanted to know about the Hobbledy Man. I loved the sound of the centuries of urban legend coming to life, the question mark over the possibility of witchcraft and a potential apocalypse in the mix. It sounded really interesting and like my type of book. I was aware from the blurb that there’d be an investigation by a social worker into the alleged gang rape of two teenage girls so I expected my review would include trigger warnings for sexual assault.
However I feel like the book I read about in the blurb and the book I attempted to read over the past ten days were two different books. The blurb was accurate to a point but had it included any of the following information I would have known straight away this wasn’t the book for me:
The Racist, Sexist, Homophobic and Anti-Muslim Parts - There are so many instances throughout the book but I’m not going to quote any of the remarks. Basically you have one group against another group to the point of riots. The escalating riots are actually a large part of the book. I know this is real life and I concede that the author did a good job of showing the escalation of the violence but I’m not personally interested in reading about rioting misogynistic, racist, homophobic, anti [insert any religious belief here] idiots, or corrupt cops for that matter.
The Swearing - I can swear with the best of them but there’s swearing and then there’s utter disrespect. I don’t voluntarily spend time with anyone who calls anyone a c***. I don’t want to read about people who speak to people like that either. Maybe you don’t have a problem with that word but I really do and I’m unapologetic about my disgust surrounding its use. Had I not been trying to read this book to review it I would have stopped reading in chapter 2 when it first showed up and I certainly wouldn’t have still been reading for the subsequent seven (so my Kindle tells me) times it was used.
I tried to connect with the characters, especially the social worker, but none of the people in this story made me need to keep reading to find out what happened to them. Even now at 80% I don’t feel like I need to know how the story ends. It took me a lot longer than it probably should have to realise that there were two characters in the book with the same first name. Yesterday when I was explaining my frustration about this book to someone I couldn’t even remember the name the characters shared or which character one of them was in the book, both of which pointed out to me my lack of investment in this story.
Because this isn’t the sort of book that I’d have started had I known what I do now I can’t tell you how it measures up against others with similar themes. I do, however, want to be specific in telling you that I want to separate the behaviour of the characters in the book from its author. Just because I hated all of the racism, sexism, all the other isms and the disgusting actions of the deplorable characters in their book doesn’t mean that I think for a moment that any of these things should be thought of the author.
This book doesn’t make me want to automatically discount this author’s other books but should I come across another one I’ll be looking at more than the blurb before I decide if it’s for me or not....more
I was so excited about this book but unfortunately I’m in the minority here and couldn’t make it past 36%. There⚠️ Warning: Unpopular Opinion Ahead ⚠️
I was so excited about this book but unfortunately I’m in the minority here and couldn’t make it past 36%. There were too many obvious nods to other books so I ended up feeling like I was reading a list of the author’s favourite things. Amongst others, it was as if I were rereading Roald Dahl, Harry Potter, Mary Poppins, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and possibly rewatching a Gilmore Girls episode, but all mashed up and distorted.
I keep going back to it and can’t move on from where I left it. If I ever manage to finish this one I’ll update my review and will grovel to the author for forgiveness if I wind up loving it. At this point though, I just can’t try any more.
Thank you so much to NetGalley And Hachette Children’s Books, Australia for giving me the opportunity to read this book....more
“quelling the urge to write B+ on her spine in lipstick.” I’m sorry. What???
I was interested in this book because of the arachnosaurs! I thoDNF @ 29%
“quelling the urge to write B+ on her spine in lipstick.” I’m sorry. What???
I was interested in this book because of the arachnosaurs! I thought this would be a lot of fun. However, I have zero interest in getting to know this misogynist sidekick loser.
Thank you to NetGalley and Lyrical Undergound, an imprint of Kensington Books, for the opportunity to read this book....more
I really enjoyed The Loneliness of Distant Beings and so I was intrigued to find out what lay in store for our castaways after living their entire liI really enjoyed The Loneliness of Distant Beings and so I was intrigued to find out what lay in store for our castaways after living their entire lives until now travelling through space with no hope of ever setting foot on land. While I’m allergic to romance I actually thought the forbidden romance between Seren and Dom in the first book was adorable.
Imagine my surprise when after the initial awe of exploring this unknown land along with Seren, Dom and their companions I wound up bored. I would’ve been happy to plod along had it not been for the extremely unbelievable development at 41%. I stopped at 42% because even though it was slow going beforehand the unnamed spoiler took me right out of the book and made me wish the author had left The Loneliness of Distant Beings as a standalone.
Having said that I’m certainly interested in The Truth of Different Skies because I love a good prequel and I’d like to find out how the events in Loneliness came to be. So in May 2018 expect me to be reading a library copy of book 3/the prequel. If I enjoy that one I’ll be revisiting this book because I’m hopeful that the prequel gives some sort of explanation that turns my unbelievable stance into an “oh, so that’s why that happened!”. If/When I make it to 100% on this one I will update this review.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Hachette Children’s Books, Australia for the opportunity to read this book....more
Schizanthus
>
Books:
dnf
(8)
Loading...
