I received an eARC from NetGalley for review.

Oy vey...

So I am normally able to read a 200-400 page book in one night. I managed to read The Revolution of Marina M. in 2 days (it's an 800 page beast of a book set in Russia). I enjoy reading and I'm fast at it thanks to learning how to speed and skim read for my six years in post secondary. I also love (LOVE) things set in Russia...about Russia...with Russian characters. I love books even remotely connected to Russia. I am an avid inhaler of historical fictions and I love when there's details put in.

With that said...it has taken me 3 days to get to page 30 and I caught myself skimming the last page!

There's both too much and not enough information at the beginning to the point that it is off-putting--not intriguing. Page 30 and I know basically nothing and I was bored out of my mind. The writing style reminds me so much of when you had to write a 25 page paper and you're at page 15 and have nothing else to add to your argument so you just start adding in random information and sentences in order to meet the length requirement. The first 30 pages could've been condensed into like 5 and kept my attention.

I'm not someone afraid of bailing on a book so I am DNFing this. I have a general rule of trying to get to page 50 of a book before bailing but I just don't want to keep reading this unfortunately. I haven't gotten far enough in to give any criticisms or praises about the story itself. Hopefully it will give others some enjoyment but this writing is just not for me.