2.5 stars

TRIGGER WARNING: CUTTING

This book. Where do I even start?

Okay, look. I love Urban Fantasy. Live for it, even. And in all my years of reading, I have never - NEVER - had this much trouble with an Urban Fantasy book. Usually all it takes is a couple pages for me to know whether or not I'm going to enjoy a UF book. NOT THIS ONE THOUGH. NOPE.

You know what? Imma make this easy for you guys. It's breakdown time.

THE WORLD BUILDING:
Confusing as heck. Look, I know there was a section at the beginning dedicated to teach me what kind of world I was entering - but it didn't help. The world this story is set in is an AU. A mangled form of our modern day world. And okay, AUs are fine. New worlds are cool as heck. But the names of things were too close to real world names, and that muddied things a ton. For instance, Moonsday and Sunsday were days of the week in this world. But didn't correspond with Monday and Sunday.

And even when you leave aside the muddied similarities to our world, there wasn't really much world building to speak of. Everything was so bloody vague

THE CHARACTERS:
Bland. None of them were the least bit stand-out. Simon was a cookie cutter alpha male, and Meg had about as much personality as cardboard box. I imagine things easily and vividly, but I couldn't build a face for a single character in this novel. The POVs - and there were a lot of them - blended into each other. I know it's written in the third person, but some distinction wouldn't have hurt anybody.

THE WRITING:
I honestly had the hardest time believing this was an adult novel. The writing was juvenile. It didn't even feel YA level. Middle-grade, maybe. It was all tell and no show. The prose had no cadence whatsoever, and tended to drone. I found myself questioning word-choice pretty often.

THE PLOT:
*inhales*
70% OF THIS BOOK WAS MEG SORTING/DELIVERING MAIL.
*exhales*

THE PREMISE:
Literally the only thing that kept me going till the end. I liked the idea of earth natives and shifters and whatnot. I liked the idea of the human vs Other conflict. I liked the whole prophet-is-property angle. I liked the ideas, and I was curious as to where the story would go. BUT LORD THIS WAS POORLY EXECUTED.


TL;DR:
Written In Red could have been good. It could have been fun and enjoyable. But with it's paper-flat characters and lackluster writing, this was nothing but a giant disappointment. Worst part is, I'm actually gonna read the rest of the series.

BECAUSE I'M A MASOCHIST. UGH.