if you were to become an astronaut and visit the international espacial station, you’d be able to look down and see the great wall of china and, standing ten times larger, my disappointment in this book.

it started so well. the writing was great. the characters were great. the banter—the banter—was phenomenal. i flipped through the first three hundred pages like i was a starving man at the sea and the end of this book, my long-waited feast.

then it left me to drown, cold and mercilessly.

i can’t remember the last time an ending let me down so hard. the story flew through plot twists and action scenes and changing hearts so quickly it left me dazzled. i still am dazzled. i’ve lost track of the convoluted family relations. lou, the main character, lost all of her spark. reid, the other main character, became a cardboard version of himself whose actions were strictly dictated by the plot. it soon became a mess of clichéd revelations and rushed and convenient events. i almost DNF 80% in, that’s how bad it got.

and the hole in the roof let sun shine on the cracks on the floor i’d ignored before. foreign words does not worlds build. i still have only a vague idea of what belterra looks like. 17th century france? 15th century france? also, although i loved the side characters—coco and ansel, count on me for everything—there was something missing. a spark. a nudge into three-dimensional-characterisation. and yes, the romance was cute, but i believe the exact moment i stopped enjoying this book was when it went from will-they-won’t-they straight into love-of-my-life territory.

no, thanks.

also, fair warning: this book is new adult. i know new adult doesn’t sell as well as young adult and that’s why publishers avoid the label, but this book is 100% new adult. i don’t know how old most characters are (again, hello, worldbuilding), but they’re too old. there’s even an extremely explicit sex scene (which caught me completely off-guard and might have contributed to my negative feelings. i don’t usually mind graphic sex when i know it’s coming, even if i don’t particularly enjoy it. but i did not know this one was coming. i repeat: no, thanks.)

anyway. this is the second time in a row that a highly anticipated book has let me down and I Am Not Here For It. pffft.