dbguide2's Reviews (863)

This was an absolute fantastic read and I loved it. It was a stunning debut for Andrew Joseph White and I can’t wait to see everything else he comes out with. His second book looks extremely creepy and stunning as well. Within the first, maybe 10? 5 even? percent of reading this book I knew it would be a 5 star read and the author a top author. He had such a way with words that I kept wanting to read.

I love the post-apocalyptic genre. Give me it in any format and with any origin story. Virus, alien apocalypse, ton of natural disasters – I don’t care. Two of my favourite things in this genre is a) people creating communities. Getting together, living in a school or small neighbourhood. These people creating a school for the children. Anyone who has medical experience setting up a “hospital”. Give me all of it. B) the environment taking over man-made structures. Give me grass all over parking lots. Vines and ivy growing all over buildings. I love it. 
 

This book had both of that in spades and I was here for all of it. The community building here was done by an LGBTQ+ centre – which I thought was excellent. I felt so much for these characters and I was happy to do that. The author did a great job at that and I hope his next book will also feature characters that I love almost immediately.

Benji and Nick were two fantastic characters and were a big reason I didn’t want to stop reading. I loved that we got both of their povs and were able to know them more (than just dialogue). Even if we just had Benji’s pov I would’ve been happy because we got to know Nick through the dialogue and his interactions with Benji. 

The plot was fantastic. The author definitely has a way with words that make you keep reading and keep you invested in the plot. Almost every chapter had me on the edge of my seat and I wanted to know more about the beginning of everything. So if he ever wanted to write a novella… I’d be right there. 

The gore was so well-written. Extremely visual in the writing and pulled no punches at all. Extremely descriptive but done amazingly well, which made it all the better to read it. Tying the gore and the post-apocalypse so closely to religion was a great choice. White certainly didn’t hold back but I didn’t mind it at all because I know religion often isn’t kind to those who don’t tick their boxes. This is a dark book and it dealt with very dark themes, specifically church-related but it was done really well. 

This was an entire… ride and experience to read and finish this book. I should’ve just gone and marked it as dnf. I rolled my eyes so hard throughout this novel 😄. I think I can count about 2 things that I liked about this book and that’s that. And even that (the two things I liked) is a bit of a stretch. I think the cover is one thing I liked?

I love dual-povs, really I do. I even love multi-povs even more. What I don’t like is when they’re not labelled. They’re also both first person (in here, along with being unlabelled) so I only figured out whose chapter it was halfway through the first page (based on what they were talking about); or when they said the other’s name and I went “Oh, it’s Lira’s chapter. Also their character voices were the same so that made it harder to differentiate them. 

There’s two tropes that I dislike heavily when it comes to female characters and they are: I’m not like other girls, and girl-on-girl hate. This basically had both of them so no wonder I didn’t like it. You had Lira going “I’m a SIREN, not a STUPID MERMAID, I’m not like them or stupid human girls”. She would remind you of those facts quite often. Like, yes, we get it. you think you’re extremely superior because you’re not like the disgusting mermaids. Even though the mermaids are very much like the sirens?

So there’s no male sirens, only mermen. They hate the mermen – because they’re merpeople and therefore unlike sirens. Here’s where I’m confused, okay. If they sleep with the mermen, won’t that make the children half merpeople? LIKE Lira the main character? The princess? Maybe even the Sea Witch? So why do we have all this hate towards merpeople when sirens are half merpeople?

We’re told that the siren children are born like mammals and not from eggs (because eggs – mermaid) but doesn’t that still mean the mermen give DNA or whatever to the children? Furthermore, the sirens think merpeople are all “savage” – which I just dislike on a base note – but it also doesn’t make sense because you’ll tell them to their face they’re the worst and how ‘savage’ they are. And then they just? expect the mermen to sleep with them? I didn’t understand how those dynamics would work, or the DNA in this world. And like normally, me + DNA = never anywhere to be seen together. But I would’ve liked some more explanations and less (weird) hate. 

The writing was bad and boring. I rolled my eyes with so many sentences and constantly thought “am I supposed… to think that sounds amazing?” Like why would I clap at Lira being all “kill men” in the beginning when the way she says it is… well, cringey? I couldn’t even enjoy her time as a human because she was so annoying about it.

Lira was a boring and annoying main character to follow. As I said before, she had the two tropes that I really dislike. As this is sort of a Little Mermaid retelling, she became a little bit better but because I didn’t like her from the start, I didn’t care about any of it. It felt like she didn’t have much of a personality? Just “oh I’m a Princess and I hate mermaids and I have a don’t care personality”. And then Christo didn’t show that to me the way I wanted her to. She was all “fantasy edgy” and the wrong type. Edge characters can be done in a good way, but not for any character in this book.

I liked Elian a bit more – but like less than 2% probably. I could predict nearly his entire storyline in the book which, of course, didn’t push up my liking of him. If I can predict what’s going to happen in the book/to the character – what’s really the point of reading the whole book. I felt like Elian didn’t really serve much of a purpose and he was a flat character. Now and then he would rise and then, whoops, back to being a pancake character (you know, because pancakes are flat). 

There was another character I vaguely liked but I think she was mostly there for Elian to be like “hoho, look how smart and devious I am” which I didn’t really like either. Actually, I think I could call all the characters in here flat as pancakes. No real personality, no drive. Just “argh, I’m a pirate” lines with nothing to back them up to prove they’re pirates.

I could see the very bare bones of The Little Mermaid – but it didn’t have the heart of the original story at all. It’s always been about what makes humans, humans, and desire and how that shapes a person. In this book that was all tell, don’t show. And as someone who absolutely loves Hans Christian Andersen – I was very disappointed. 

I finally decided to stop reading at 60%. I really should’ve stopped at like 15 or 20%. I wasn’t taking in anything and when I stopped reading I basically forgot about everything that was in the book – names, whatever the plot was. What I do remember is a very, very confusing plot – that even after looking at spoilery reviews – I don’t understand.

The cover and the synopsis made me see it as a simple YA mystery/thriller book. I got something very more confusing and because I wasn’t interested in any of it I didn’t want to take the time to properly try to understand the book. I don’t remember any of the characters? None were memorable at all – I only remember some names because I looked at the synopsis when I started this review.

Further on than not just remembering anything, I didn’t want to know more about them or read their dialogue with each other. That also made me decide to stop reading it because you shouldn’t really try to force yourself to care about characters, you know? 

I got to about 33 or so percent when I realised I wasn’t taking anything in and I wasn’t really interested. Not the characters, plot, world-building, anything could really get me into the book. Unfortunately, skimming ahead didn’t really do anything for me, so dnf it is.

I don’t have much to say about the characters because I didn’t feel like I knew them. The writing’s partially at fault. It’s also due to the pacing. It was incredibly fast at the beginning and then slowed down, then went fast and back and forth. That didn’t give me the time I needed to figure out the characters’ personalities or the world-building because I kept trying to catch up with the pace.

I think I can tell you like two things about Kiera (well, three if you include her name). One, that she has a father. I have no idea if she talks to him after she goes to the palace. Or if she ever sees him again. And two that she’s able to wield some type of healing magic that was probably explained as she grew more experienced.

I also don’t really have a lot to say about Dorian because he wasn’t exactly memorable to me. He didn’t feel like he was a Fae character. He felt more like a character who simply happened to have pointed ears and could use magic. I know I’m fairly new to the Fae genre but I don’t think that’s how it should be? 

Unfortunately the cover and synopsis deceived me. I thought it would be a high fantasy because it had the dragons and quests so my first thought with those are usually high fantasy books. And then when modern words and ideas appeared – trains, the word underwear (which can be used but sort of isn’t) I was fine because “oh it’s just a modern fantasy world”. I then grew more confused because formal words were used for family and then the grandmother… gets a granny? And on and on it went. If you want your fantasy world to be a modern one, that’s all good and well, but make it consistent?

The writing style was very difficult – both from a writer’s perspective and a reader’s. It also made it more confusing to figure out what kind of a fantasy it was because the way it was written would change regularly. The sentences, way the characters looked and spoke about things – went from a modern way to a “normal” fantasy way constantly. That sort of back and forth is difficult for readers to receive.

Ultimately, I think the author should’ve spent more time writing the book and working on improving his writing. I could see Dickson’s passionate about writing and the story he wanted to tell but unfortunately it was hard to see. Also, while I’m very fine with issues – real world ones – being in books but there’s… almost an acceptable amount and then there was what is included in this book? Which can either help or hinder a book – depending on the author and how they manage to write it/write it into the book. 

Wren and Asher were two characters I loved basically from the get-go. Asher’s sweet personality and the way he gets just about everyone to like him almost instantly had me liking him easily. Wren was relatable with having her walls up and I liked seeing how she went from “nope I have x amount of rules. Can’t break them” to “whoops, another rule broken for Asher.” Which, I mean, is understandable because Asher is very adorable. 

Most of the secondary characters I liked. Kamala – Wren’s friend – I really liked. She was funny and a good friend to Wren – cared, comforted her. Dale was just annoying all around – he didn’t raise himself in my eyes at all. If other readers liked him – that’s their choice. I suppose there was an instance here and there where he was sort of okay, but that happened when I had already made up my mind about him. That meant I wasn’t interested in changing how I thought about him. 

I quickly sussed out Wren’s mom’s personality when she first appeared on the page. I would groan every time she was in a scene because I knew whatever she said would hurt Wren. And she kept proving me right! I also got annoyed with Wren’s sister because I felt like Wren should’ve been the older sister and Zoey the younger? Like Wren’s personality is very much older sister – how she thinks, how she views their mom; while Zoey’s is a younger sister’s view (that’s just my thoughts on the matter, of course). I liked Zoey slightly more at the end of the book and I wonder if the sequel will follow her or Kamala. 

I love the fake dating trope – don’t mind reading it over and over again and this was a cute one! I appreciated what was done here with social media – expectations, downfalls, and the various issues it can bring. I felt like it did a good deal of that without being too preachy – which could happen very quickly when an older author is writing teen fiction.

The reason (or one of them) why I like the fake dating trope is because I like seeing how the characters develop. Sometimes they’re friends who agree to fake date but strangers fake dating (for whatever reasons) is also pretty popular. I’m good with either (strangers or friends) but I do enjoy strangers a tad bit better? You have them both trying to fit into each other’s friendship groups and trying to establish that you are, in fact, dating this person while also getting to know them.

It’s even funnier in this instance because Wren has to now act like she actually knows Asher and things about him (because she’s filling in for Gemma) – even though they’re are the strangers fake dating trope. It gave me a lot of second-hand embarrassment – which is another reason why I love the faking dating trope. There’s something about awkward squawking at a book when a character is being awkward. 

The plot was (mostly) sweet and the pacing easy. Very glad there’s no animal harm/death in here – so so glad. West did a good job in making the animal characters their own characters – and they were sweet and I loved them. It’s such a a quick read that you won’t see the time flying by.

I didn’t feel like the third act breakup was unwarranted – definitely something I knew was coming and I liked how it was handled. Wren should also go to therapy. I hope she gets that because she really needs it. I also liked how they made up – it didn’t feel too unbelievable for me (I mean they’re also teens so they wouldn’t have all the emotional maturity feeling like most adult romances do). 

Kokoro is a character that I loved instantly and I’m glad we had her as a main character. I really liked that as the book went on she opened up to her mom – I think that relationship will improve (after the book is finished). I’m also very happy that her parents didn’t force her to go to school – I think that helped me to like them more. She (Kokoro) was a great main character to follow because she fit the essence of this book so well.

It’s a slow-paced book but the author writes it without making it seem too slow. Sometimes it felt like the story was dragging a bit but the author quickly managed to bring it back and therefore keep my interest piqued.

I definitely did not predict the plot twists that happened in the book and I think I can predict about 60-70% of plot twists in books? So the fact that everything here took me by surprise was a joy to read. Especially because it meant that I could just sit and enjoy the book without being (somewhat) annoyed at where it was going because I could predict the plot. 

The other characters in this were also slow to get to know but I think as you delve deeper into the story you really get to know them. And I hope that, just like they made me cry, that they’ll leave you in tears – or at the very least, wanting to hold the nearest thing to you tightly because you feel sad. 

 As I’ve said countless of times before – one mark of a good book is when I don’t realise how much I’m reading until I make myself stop and it’s like 40% or I’ve just finished the entire book. Glad to say this was one of those cases. Also I’m glad that I’ve had a couple of those experiences in my read book for this year. Makes up for the not good experiences that I unfortunately had to endure.

Johnathan Newman, a vampire hunter, newly assigned to a small town, was a good main character to follow. He’s smart, empathetic, and has a sad backstory. The sad backstory wasn’t a reason for me to like him, I’m not that kind of reader; but it allowed us to get to know him really well.

I liked Vic. I liked how he appeared to be all mysterious in the beginning and how he reveals his personality through Johnathan. Not only does that mean Johnathan gets to know him but we as the reader get to know the both of them (as they reveal themselves to each other). Plus we see their relationship growing.

I definitely want to read the sequel to see their relationship grow. I think Jacques did a good job of forming it and hopefully more cute moments will appear in the future. Luckily I’m able to get the sequel from the same site (StoryOrigin) so I hope I can read it soon. 

I really enjoyed the plot in this! I thought it would go one way, be abc and then it was entirely upside down and I couldn’t predict like I thought I would be able to. I actually prefer these to the books where I can predict what happens. I hope that the next book also has a plot where I don’t really get to predict it. 

Reached 50% and really didn’t want to read further. I didn’t care much about anything