3.75 stars, rounded up because I liked it so much better than the first book, which I also gave 3 stars.

1.5 stars
This one really hurts.

SPOILERS AHEAD.



I LOVE Much Ado About Nothing. It is probably my favorite Shakespeare play, and I've liked the various film/web adaptations I've seen of it. When I read the synopsis of this adaptation, I was super excited. It is marketed as a prequel of sorts to the main action in MAAN. It's supposed to be a story about Beatrice and Benedick (hence the clever title 🙄) falling in love, having a misunderstanding and being separated, then coming back together. And technically, I suppose it does hit those plot points. But this book is a damn mess.

What I liked:

1. The concept. Like I said, the idea of a prequel for these two characters was super intriguing. It's pretty obvious in the text of the play that they have some history that goes unexplored.

2. The first 50(ish) pages. I thought this started very strong. I loved their first couple scenes together. Their flirty banter was so much fun and I was totally there for it. I also appreciated (in the beginning) the author's attempt to create more of a complex world.

What I didn't like:

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

1. The complete and utter bastardization of this story and it's characters.
I felt like the author hadn't even read the source material. The changes she made to the characters as far as their motivations and personalities didn't work at all for me. Don Pedro was completely butchered. He was not a villain. Yes, he made mistakes and let himself get swayed by his brother, but at his core he was an honorable man. This book turns him into a miserable person.
Also, the tone of this book is so off from what the story was supposed to be. MAAN is a comedy about misunderstandings and miscommunications. It's supposed to be light-hearted and farcical. True, there are some darker things happening that COULD have disastrous consequences, but the whole point is that at the end of the day everyone is okay...that all that misunderstanding was...much ado...about NOTHING. In this book, people are burned alive, dismembered, cannibalized, starved, gutted, poisoned, strangled, and commit suicide. Also a ship full of horses are pushed into the ocean to lighten up the ship.

2. Completely unnecessary sub-plots and filler.
I hated the subplots surrounding the Crollalanzas and all of the religious and political subplots. Also the entire section of Benedick and the other soldiers at sea was nearly unreadable for me. At the beginning, I appreciated that the author was trying to create a rich and full world, but it was just too much. I didn't pick this book up wanting an iffy history lesson. I wanted a romantic adaptation of MAAN...

3. Way too meta.
The first couple of times the author lifted lines from MAAN and used them in a different context in this book I thought it was somewhat clever. But she does it constantly throughout the book and even goes so far as to lift entire plot points and bring them into this story, which again, is supposed to be a PREQUEL to the action in MAAN.
Not only that, but there are countless not-so-subtle winks at other Shakespeare plays and writings peppered throughout the entire length of the book. This is not clever or cute. All it does is butcher more of Shakespeare's work. Then there is the character of Michelangelo, who the author tells us at the end is actually supposed to be Shakespeare. Give me a damn break.

4. There were almost no Beatrice and Benedick scenes, and the ones we got became incredibly repetitive. Again, I picked up this book because it was supposed to be a prequel focusing on Beatrice and Benedick's romance. But they spend more of the book apart than together. It's aggravating.



Other Thoughts

1. Typos.
I caught two typos as I read, and those were just the blatant ones that I saw. I will admit, I skimmed a good chunk of the middle, so it's highly possible there were more in there...

2. Sailors were starving on a ship but never once mention trying to fish.

3. Claudio is a little prick in this. His character was never my favorite, but his pomposity is truly annoying here.

4. Don John might as well not be in this book. They made Don Pedro the big-bad which makes zero sense. Then it was like the author didn't know how to get out of the corner she'd written herself into and so she tried to half-ass a redemption arc which didn't work because she'd spent nearly 400 pages cementing him as a giant dick.


I am so disgusted by this book. I know I'm forgetting some points, so this may get an edit at some point, but for now I just want to donate this piece of garbage book and move on with my life.

1.5 stars
This is a book I probably would've liked in my teens. A YA paranormal romance with simple writing. Unfortunately, all of those things contributed to my dislike of this book.

What I liked:
1. it was an incredibly quick read. I finished it in just a couple hours

What I didn't like:
1. The writing: To say the writing was simplistic would be generous. It just wasn't good. There was no subtlety at all, and it was incredibly repetitive.

2. The 'plot': This was incredibly weak. Yes it loved fast, but nothing happened. NOTHING. There was no point whatsoever to this book. The climax was seriously underwhelming and then the book just ended, with no sense of closure, but also not a cliffhanger. It was just abrupt.

3. Characters: Wendy was straight-up annoying. Her whiny attitude just got on my damn nerves. She was also not very intelligent, regardless of the fact that we are told that Trylle's are supposed to be very intelligent. Finn was completely one-dimensional. Willa and Tove were interesting, but completely under-developed. And Elora was needlessly obnoxious.

4. 'You're-not-like-other-girls' a.k.a 'Chosen One' trope to the point that all the male characters seem to be attracted to her above others.

5. The romance: It was so forced. Just, no. How can she say she's in love with him when he literally avoids telling her anything.

Which leads us to my biggest aggravation...

6. Stringing out 'reveals': I counted 8 different instances in this book where a character flat-out refused to answer Wendy's questions...for NO DAMN REASON.

Keep in mind, I didn't start counting the first time I noticed it, so there may be others. And there is literally no reason. She is told that she has to 'act like a princess' but isn't actually told what that entails. When she does something 'un-princess-like' she is berated by her mother and Finn but when she asks for clarification on why it was wrong she's told, "You'll find out later." or something along those lines. This is some lazy freaking writing right here. The author is basically pointing out the fact that Wendy is being kept in the dark for no reason and is refusing to address it. It makes no sense whatsoever. One example off the top of my head actually happens more than once. Wendy is told that Rhys is a mansklig. When she asks what that is, no one will tell her. She and Finn hang out with Rhys and Rhiannon one day, but when Wendy falls asleep watching a movie and Rhys' house, Finn and her mother freak out and Finn tells her she can't hang out with mansklig...as if she's supposed to know that when he tells her NOTHING. It's ridiculous. Another instance of this is when they have guests for dinner and Finn tells her she needs to dress 'like a princess' and be on her best behavior because the guests are really important. She asks why and he says, "That's a story for a different day." WHY?! Why is it a story for a different day? There isn't even a real reveal later on that discusses it, so I'm not sure why it was some big secret.

A conversation between her and Tove literally went like this:

W: What do you know?

T: Have they told you?

W: Told me what?

T: Well, if they haven't told you, I'm certainly not going to.

And then it's dropped and never revisited.

😡😡😡😡

Oh man, this book is just not well-written at all.

7. The justification given for the switching is really weak. If they really wanted money couldn't they persuade the rich to give them money? No, instead the install their offspring into wealthy homes and steal their children...why the fuck should I root for these people.

8. There is no world-building to speak of.

I will not be continuing in this series.

EDIT: I read some reviews of this book and saw comments that said the next two books get so much better...it wasn't enough for me to actually want to read them but I did go and look at spoilers reviews to see what happens and I'm so glad I made the decision I did. Life is too short to read shitty books.

I picked this book up at half price books forever ago because it was cheap and the cover was gorgeous. I honestly don't think I even read the synopsis when I purchased it.

I picked it up today and read the synopsis and was immediately intrigued by the premise: a novel based on the poem/song Scarborough Fair.

Unfortunately, I had some serious issues with the execution of this novel.

***Trigger warnings for sexual assault***

Things I liked:

1. The concept. I just thought this was so unique. And reading the author's note after I finished the book and how the author went from a seedling of an idea to a full-blown novel was interesting.

2. The cover. 10/10


What I didn't like:

1. The writing. I just felt like it was a little all over the place. I didn't mind getting multiple perspectives, including the villain, but I wish it had been a little more cohesive and that the voices had been more distinct. It was very simplistic, to the point of feeling kind of stilted at times. I'm really surprised this author was a national book award finalist.

2. The pacing. While this book ended up being a quick read, I felt like it took quite awhile to get to the main action of the story. The author spent a lot of time setting up the plot.

3. The characters. I didn't hate any of these characters (except the villain, who you're SUPPOSED to hate) but I also didn't connect to any of them. I didn't feel like any of them were well-developed. I also didn't like that the author had characters act in ways that didn't make sense and they couldn't really explain, but ended up helping them...and then it was explained away as 'true love wins' and that's supposed to be enough. Magical realism doesn't have to explain everything, but a little would be niceZ

4. The ending. The story dragged along for most of the book and then in the last few pages everything just kind of flew by.

5. The author's use of sexual assault as a plot point. When the assault happened, I was shocked, to be honest. I didn't realize the book was going to go that dark. But that wasn't something that would make me DNF a book. However, I felt like the author didn't deal with the aftermath of the rape in a way that was realistic. The character who is assaulted gets over the assault so quickly. We hear an off-the-cuff remark about therapy...and that's it. We never actually see her in a session. We never see her struggle with the fact that she was utterly violated. It doesn't seem to bother her much, even in the beginning. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.

At the end of the day, I felt like this had so much potential as it was really a unique kind of adaptation, but ultimately I wasn't impressed.

Full of clichés, soap-opera tropes, and cheesy, un-descriptive writing.

It was, however, very readable. I've been in a slump and I still flew through this book, so it gets two stars from me.

I have this really bad habit of buying cheap e-books that I read as I'm trying to quiet my mind down at night. More often than not, they are fluffy/trashy romances. I am almost never a fan. I really need an intervention or something.

This book was so incredibly bad that mediocre would be an upgrade. There was not a unique moment to be found. Cliche after cliche and the writing was completely amateurish. I cannot believe all of the high ratings this book has.

The amount of telling instead of showing is crazy. Months of time are recounted in a couple of pages. There is not substance to be found.

The characters are just plain stupid. The female protagonist, Darcy, has a meltdown because of a situation her friend is in which makes her completely avoid Tom, the male protagonist, for weeks. Then when she sees him talking to a group of girls in a public place, she flips out. Later when she misconstrues something, he refuses to talk to her about it and avoids her for weeks. It's a bunch of angsty, pointless, manufactured drama.

Also, there are far too many side characters to keep them all straight, especially when not a single one is fleshed-out. I know next to nothing about any of them. There would be scenes with like ten different people talking, and they all sounded like the same person.

The intimate scenes aren't well written at all. I figure with books like these the least the author could do would be to write some steamy sexy scenes...but no.

I don't see myself picking up any more from this author.

3.5
This book was a fun, light read. I've read some nonsensical angst-ridden books recently, so this one was refreshing. I actually liked the characters and while the circumstances weren't realistic, it was a fun read.