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kaitlynisliterate's Reviews (466)
The romance just didn’t work for me. And I felt like the plot would completely halt in its tracks for a few chapters just to rehash the same “they can’t possibly like me!” thing.
If I can impart any single piece of information with this review, it’s this: do not read the author’s note until you’ve finished the book.
Usually, I wouldn't mention this since the author’s notes are at the end of the book but for some reason, this one is placed at the very beginning (at least in the ARC I read). (If I can speculate, I think the author’s note was placed at the start of the book to preemptively assuage concerns from the reader about the villain/protagonist romance.)
The author’s note mentions one specific historical event that will basically spoil the plot twist and ending of the book. It certainly did for me.
Now on to reviewing the actual book.
The worldbuilding in this book is pretty rough. There are huge info-dumps in the first few chapters and a lot of clunky expository dialogue where characters bring up things (eg: past history, in-universe historical events, etc) that they both already know and are aware that the other person knows too.
I found myself becoming increasingly irritated and annoyed by the main character, Ruying, as the book went on. Her thoughts are extremely repetitive and take up so much of the book. We almost never learn anything new about Ruying, about the world, about any of the characters from these internal monologues. That would already be bad enough but her actions also frequently and inexplicably go against her repetitive internal monologue that immediately preceded it. We will literally have pages of her thoughts (rehashing the same thing as the last chapter and every chapter before that) followed by her acting the complete opposite of how she was just thinking. This makes it feel as if her thoughts are completely irrelevant to the story and only there to fill space. For example, Ruying is given a “test” by Antony before becoming his assassin where she is required to kill someone without her powers. She has already agreed to be his private assassin in the previous chapter and we’ve spent pages upon pages being walked through her thought process in coming to this decision. We’re told again and again that she is willing to do ANYTHING to protect her sister and grandmother. And then when she is given the gun to kill this person, she just… refuses. The author knows that Antony is going to give her one more chance to prove herself to him because she’s writing the damn thing but Ruying has no reason to believe that. She believes that Antony is going to kill her on the spot for her refusal (and then kill her sister and grandmother) because that is what he has basically promised to do. So why does she refuse? WHO KNOWS because it goes against everything she has been thinking up to this moment. Ruying’s repetitive internal thoughts are only aggravated by the prose which frequently uses choppy sentences to emphasize things. Like this. And again. And again.
This book also has a pacing problem. Approximately 30% of the book occurs between when Antony first asks her to become his private assassin and her actually agreeing to it. It’s just pages and pages of her having the same circular arguments with herself, her self-hating internal monologue, and Antony repeating the same “just trust me, it’s for the greater good” line. And after all of this, once she actually becomes Antony’s private assassin, we don’t even get to see her first assassination and the aftermath of it. We don’t get to see the first 48 assassinations because they’re all glossed over in a single chapter.
Ruying is not a morally gray protagonist. She’s just a somewhat naive, vaguely stupid, and extremely self-loathing one. I was so disappointed by how the narrative bends itself backward to ensure that Ruying is never actually given a real choice and thus never makes the morally gray (or even outright horrific) choice. For example, we’re told early on that Ruying is scared of using her Gift because of a traumatic event from her childhood. Did she kill another child with her Gift because she was angry/upset and 7-year-olds don’t have impulse control and can’t comprehend the concept of death? No, that would be actually morally gray. Instead, let’s have another child literally try to murder her with their Gift and have Ruying act only in self-defense. But we’ll just make her hate herself for it and call it morally gray. Ruying’s Gift is literally the ability to kill anyone and she NEVER kills a single person before she is forced to. Before Ruying becomes Antony’s assassin and notwithstanding the childhood incident, she NEVER kills someone with or without her powers. She just temporarily incapacitates them. She never even wants to kill someone or thinks about killing someone.
Ruying is doing what I can only describe as a stupid version of Pascale’s wager. In this world, many people believe that magical powers (referred to as a Gift) are blessings from the gods and that emperors are descendants of the gods. Ruying basically alternates between not believing in these myths and following superstition “just in case.” It becomes clear that customs/superstitions are important to Ruying only when the plot needs her to not take the obvious course of action and are basically ignored when not needed as a plot device. It makes the world feel very fake and hollow.
The main tension in the story is this: Ruying agrees to assassinate members of the anti-colonial resistance to prevent a doomed revolution rather than have herself and her family killed. Has she made the correct decision?
The arguments made against Ruying’s decision (made by Ruying herself, her sister, Baihu, etc) are convoluted, contradictory, and laughably weak. Billions of people in the real world have lived under colonialism and imperialism at some point in time. There have been serious ethical and moral arguments made against collaborating with the colonial occupying power. The author chooses to have her side characters make none of them. Instead, they are portrayed as overly emotional, hysterical, borderline suicidal, and idealistic. In particular, the arguments between Ruying and her sister are ridiculous. I got the feeling that everything the characters say during an argument is written to lead to a pre-determined ending instead of attempting to portray real human interaction. I simply can’t believe that this wasn’t intentional on the part of the author to allow Ruying to wallow in self-pity while leading the reader to the conclusion that Ruying has no other choice. Ruying constantly berates herself for being a coward and a traitor but never ever tries to think of a way out of her situation. The plan that Ruying comes to at the very end of the book (after the plot twist) should have been one of the first things she (and anyone else for that matter) thought of. But the author goes to great lengths to avoid having any character bring up this option before that final scene.
I’m also not sure why this book was written as YA because I frequently felt that the genre was constraining the content/tone of the story. This is supposed to be an extremely violent and grim colonial/imperialist regime but so much if it is described vaguely or occurs off-page. Ruying is 19 years old, Antony is 20 years old, and Baihu is 20 years old. There is no reason why it couldn’t be an adult fantasy book.
Usually, I wouldn't mention this since the author’s notes are at the end of the book but for some reason, this one is placed at the very beginning (at least in the ARC I read). (If I can speculate, I think the author’s note was placed at the start of the book to preemptively assuage concerns from the reader about the villain/protagonist romance.)
The author’s note mentions one specific historical event that will basically spoil the plot twist and ending of the book. It certainly did for me.
Now on to reviewing the actual book.
The worldbuilding in this book is pretty rough. There are huge info-dumps in the first few chapters and a lot of clunky expository dialogue where characters bring up things (eg: past history, in-universe historical events, etc) that they both already know and are aware that the other person knows too.
I found myself becoming increasingly irritated and annoyed by the main character, Ruying, as the book went on. Her thoughts are extremely repetitive and take up so much of the book. We almost never learn anything new about Ruying, about the world, about any of the characters from these internal monologues. That would already be bad enough but her actions also frequently and inexplicably go against her repetitive internal monologue that immediately preceded it. We will literally have pages of her thoughts (rehashing the same thing as the last chapter and every chapter before that) followed by her acting the complete opposite of how she was just thinking. This makes it feel as if her thoughts are completely irrelevant to the story and only there to fill space. For example,
This book also has a pacing problem. Approximately 30% of the book occurs between when Antony first asks her to become his private assassin and her actually agreeing to it. It’s just pages and pages of her having the same circular arguments with herself, her self-hating internal monologue, and Antony repeating the same “just trust me, it’s for the greater good” line. And after all of this, once she actually becomes Antony’s private assassin,
Ruying is not a morally gray protagonist. She’s just a somewhat naive, vaguely stupid, and extremely self-loathing one. I was so disappointed by how the narrative bends itself backward to ensure that Ruying is never actually given a real choice and thus never makes the morally gray (or even outright horrific) choice. For example, we’re told early on that Ruying is scared of using her Gift because of a traumatic event from her childhood.
Ruying is doing what I can only describe as a stupid version of Pascale’s wager. In this world, many people believe that magical powers (referred to as a Gift) are blessings from the gods and that emperors are descendants of the gods. Ruying basically alternates between not believing in these myths and following superstition “just in case.” It becomes clear that customs/superstitions are important to Ruying only when the plot needs her to not take the obvious course of action and are basically ignored when not needed as a plot device. It makes the world feel very fake and hollow.
The main tension in the story is this: Ruying agrees to assassinate members of the anti-colonial resistance to prevent a doomed revolution rather than have herself and her family killed. Has she made the correct decision?
The arguments made against Ruying’s decision (made by Ruying herself, her sister, Baihu, etc) are convoluted, contradictory, and laughably weak. Billions of people in the real world have lived under colonialism and imperialism at some point in time. There have been serious ethical and moral arguments made against collaborating with the colonial occupying power. The author chooses to have her side characters make none of them. Instead, they are portrayed as overly emotional, hysterical, borderline suicidal, and idealistic. In particular, the arguments between Ruying and her sister are ridiculous. I got the feeling that everything the characters say during an argument is written to lead to a pre-determined ending instead of attempting to portray real human interaction. I simply can’t believe that this wasn’t intentional on the part of the author to allow Ruying to wallow in self-pity while leading the reader to the conclusion that Ruying has no other choice. Ruying constantly berates herself for being a coward and a traitor but never ever tries to think of a way out of her situation. The plan that Ruying comes to at the very end of the book (after the plot twist) should have been one of the first things she (and anyone else for that matter) thought of. But the author goes to great lengths to avoid having any character bring up this option before that final scene.
I’m also not sure why this book was written as YA because I frequently felt that the genre was constraining the content/tone of the story. This is supposed to be an extremely violent and grim colonial/imperialist regime but so much if it is described vaguely or occurs off-page. Ruying is 19 years old, Antony is 20 years old, and Baihu is 20 years old. There is no reason why it couldn’t be an adult fantasy book.
I really enjoyed The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert! It was engaging and well-paced with a likable main character, Nora. I’m not sure I would classify this book as horror though but more of a magical mystery/thriller.
The prologue gives this book a strong start by introducing us briefly to the four people who disappear in one night. Considering that the book starts off slowly with Nora only piecing together that four people have disappeared after the first few chapters, the prologue ensures that the reader at least knows that four people have disappeared right off the bat. Nora slowly discovers more about the three people other than her best friend, Becca, and each revelation is spaced out enough to keep me wanting to read more.
The ending is probably the weakest part of the book as we have Becca basically explain her entire side of the story from a hospital bed. The toxic friendship between Nora and Becca remains unaddressed with Nora seemingly forgetting about it with Becca’s return. I wished that Nora had a stronger character arc as I felt like the book was moving towards Nora realizing how manipulative Becca was and how poorly she treated Nora at times. I really disliked how Becca’s trauma was basically used to justify her behavior towards others, especially Nora, and the harm that she caused.
The book also does a pretty bad job of explaining why the entity that possessed Nora was so bad. Obviously, I’m not condoning murder but there’s no reflection on how Becca/the entity literally prevented a school shooting and stopped a child predator/groomer. It's not clear that Becca or frankly Nora really learned anything from their experience or how to deal with evil in the world.
If the ending was stronger and the toxic friendship between Nora and Becca was explored more, I think this could have been 5 stars. As it is, this is a solid 4-star read.
The prologue gives this book a strong start by introducing us briefly to the four people who disappear in one night. Considering that the book starts off slowly with Nora only piecing together that four people have disappeared after the first few chapters, the prologue ensures that the reader at least knows that four people have disappeared right off the bat. Nora slowly discovers more about the three people other than her best friend, Becca, and each revelation is spaced out enough to keep me wanting to read more.
The ending is probably the weakest part of the book as we have
The book also does a pretty bad job of explaining why
If the ending was stronger and the toxic friendship between Nora and Becca was explored more, I think this could have been 5 stars. As it is, this is a solid 4-star read.
Everything We Never Said by Sloan Harlow didn’t make a ton of sense but was a quick page-turner nevertheless. The story is told from Ella’s POV with occasional chapters from Sawyer’s POV and Hayley’s diary.
I can’t possibly list all the different things that don’t make sense or contradict each other so I’ll just go into a few examples that occur early in the book to avoid spoilers as much as possible.
I was a bit confused after the first few chapters of the book because I was slowly realizing that the blurb for this book includes a straight-up lie. It says “Then the school psychologist requires that Hayley’s closest friends join him for a grief counseling group, and Ella and Sawyer are forced together. After a few sessions, they start to grow closer, until Ella realizes something horrifying…” There aren’t “a few sessions,” there is literally one single session contained within a single chapter and then the grief counseling group is never mentioned again. The grief counseling session isn’t even the first time Sawyer and Ella interact in the story.
The grief counseling session is so contrived and becomes just another thing in this book that makes no sense. We’re told that Rachael is one of Hayley’s friends and that Ella is in Latin class with Rachael. Then, Ella is specifically called out of class to attend this grief counseling session. Only Ella (and possibly Sawyer) was forced into attending the grief counseling session and everyone else volunteered to attend. None of Hayley’s other friends were required to attend and none except Scott chose to. The school administration is apparently keenly aware of who was a student’s best friend and who was simply a regular friend and for some reason is only concerned about providing support for Hayley’s best friend and not for all her other friends. Having this scene make sense would require such minimal changes so it’s baffling why it was written like this.
At multiple points in the story, the reader is told something major about a character to further the plot but it is never mentioned again. For example, after the first day of school, Ella and her mom almost get into a fight over Ella’s decision to quit the swim team. This is meant to show Ella’s family dynamic before and after Hayley’s death and reemphasize how much of a stellar student Ella was. Ella is considered good enough to be scouted by top universities but the decision to quit is never brought up again.
The way that Hayley’s diary entries are written is so unbelievable. No one can write down entire conversations that they’ve had verbatim and from memory hours after the conversation occurred. Yet Hayley’s diary entries consist of basically transcripts of entire conversations including incredibly emotional and intense conversations. After the first two entries, I thought that this was a clue that the diary is fake (like in Gone Girl) but no, it turns out that this diary is real and no one (not even the police) doubts the authenticity of the diary.
The biggest issue I had with this book was the narrative framing of Ella’s role in the accident that killed Hayley. We are told from the very first chapter that Ella is wracked by guilt and blames herself for Hayley’s death yet everyone around her (except Scott but we’ll discuss him later) assures Ella that it wasn’t her fault. While Ella believes that her (and Hayley’s) friends are only being nice to her out of pity but secretly dislike her and don’t want her around, the narrative heavily implies to the reader that this isn’t true.
But in the second chapter, we are told thatElla was drinking while underage at a party before driving and crashed the car with Hayley inside, killing her. Ella has no memories of that entire day so the reader is only told that witnesses from the party saw Ella drinking a beer. We have no sense of how much Ella really drank or what her BAC was. There was this extreme cognitive dissonance in how the narrative expects the reader to feel about Ella’s role in Hayley’s death and the facts that are presented to the reader.
The root of the problem is this: The author already knows that Hayley is not dead (and that Ella was thus not responsible for Hayley’s death at all and should not feel guilty) before the reader or Ella knows. So unintentionally, the author does not have the plot treat the idea that Ella caused Hayley’s death seriously even though from the facts available to the reader and to Ella for most of the story, that’s exactly what it looks like. The story takes for a given that the reader agrees that Ella is too hard on herself and that she shouldn’t feel so guilty before the plot twist happens.
The hoops that characters jump through to justify Ella's drinking and driving are wild. In Hayley’s letter to Ella at the end of the book, she says that Ella was just drinking a Natty Light so it’s no big deal.
Literally, the only person to blame Ella for Hayley’s death is Scott and he is described as annoying and mean for doing so. In fact, at the end of the story, he apologizes to Ella for his behavior towards her. No one else even remotely cares that Ella was drinking before getting into a fatal accident.
On a related note, everyone in this book including all the adults (and the police) has a completely blasé attitude towards straight-up crimes up to and including manslaughter. We are explicitly told that Ella has faced zero consequences for the underage drinking and driving that led to a fatal accident.
When the big plot twist at the end of the book reveals that Hayley faked her death with Sawyer’s help, neither of them even consider that Ella could be prosecuted for Hayley’s death. Hayley’s only concern is that Ella will blame herself for killing her, not that Ella might go to jail. Again, the problem is that the author has unintentionally factored the fact that Hayley is not dead into the plot even though only Hayley and Sawyer (and eventually Ella) are supposed to know that.
On a related note, I just have to mention how completely and totally unrealistic the plot twist is. Firstly, the idea that an actual domestic violence shelter is going to commit a felony (obstruction of justice) on your behalf is absurd. A DV shelter can help you disappear from an abusive partner but not literally fake your death like it's witness protection. Secondly, the idea that Mr. Wilkens’ car hit Ella’s car hard enough to send it in through the barriers and this didn’t leave a recognizable dent/impact on Ella’s car for the police to notice is equally absurd.
Let me end this review with something that I actually liked about this book. If you basically turn your brain off, this can be a quick and fun read. The plot goes pretty off the rails going into the climax of the book and I did enjoythe “good for her” Hayley arc
I can’t possibly list all the different things that don’t make sense or contradict each other so I’ll just go into a few examples that occur early in the book to avoid spoilers as much as possible.
I was a bit confused after the first few chapters of the book because I was slowly realizing that the blurb for this book includes a straight-up lie. It says “Then the school psychologist requires that Hayley’s closest friends join him for a grief counseling group, and Ella and Sawyer are forced together. After a few sessions, they start to grow closer, until Ella realizes something horrifying…” There aren’t “a few sessions,” there is literally one single session contained within a single chapter and then the grief counseling group is never mentioned again. The grief counseling session isn’t even the first time Sawyer and Ella interact in the story.
The grief counseling session is so contrived and becomes just another thing in this book that makes no sense. We’re told that Rachael is one of Hayley’s friends and that Ella is in Latin class with Rachael. Then, Ella is specifically called out of class to attend this grief counseling session. Only Ella (and possibly Sawyer) was forced into attending the grief counseling session and everyone else volunteered to attend. None of Hayley’s other friends were required to attend and none except Scott chose to. The school administration is apparently keenly aware of who was a student’s best friend and who was simply a regular friend and for some reason is only concerned about providing support for Hayley’s best friend and not for all her other friends. Having this scene make sense would require such minimal changes so it’s baffling why it was written like this.
At multiple points in the story, the reader is told something major about a character to further the plot but it is never mentioned again. For example, after the first day of school, Ella and her mom almost get into a fight over Ella’s decision to quit the swim team. This is meant to show Ella’s family dynamic before and after Hayley’s death and reemphasize how much of a stellar student Ella was. Ella is considered good enough to be scouted by top universities but the decision to quit is never brought up again.
The way that Hayley’s diary entries are written is so unbelievable. No one can write down entire conversations that they’ve had verbatim and from memory hours after the conversation occurred. Yet Hayley’s diary entries consist of basically transcripts of entire conversations including incredibly emotional and intense conversations. After the first two entries, I thought that
The biggest issue I had with this book was the narrative framing of Ella’s role in the accident that killed Hayley. We are told from the very first chapter that Ella is wracked by guilt and blames herself for Hayley’s death yet everyone around her (except Scott but we’ll discuss him later) assures Ella that it wasn’t her fault. While Ella believes that her (and Hayley’s) friends are only being nice to her out of pity but secretly dislike her and don’t want her around, the narrative heavily implies to the reader that this isn’t true.
But in the second chapter, we are told that
The root of the problem is this:
The hoops that characters jump through to justify Ella's drinking and driving are wild. In Hayley’s letter to Ella at the end of the book, she says that Ella was just drinking a Natty Light so it’s no big deal.
Literally, the only person to blame Ella for Hayley’s death is Scott and he is described as annoying and mean for doing so. In fact, at the end of the story, he apologizes to Ella for his behavior towards her. No one else even remotely cares that Ella was drinking before getting into a fatal accident.
On a related note, everyone in this book including all the adults (and the police) has a completely blasé attitude towards straight-up crimes up to and including manslaughter. We are explicitly told that Ella
When the big plot twist at the end of the book reveals that
On a related note, I just have to mention how completely and totally unrealistic the plot twist is.
Let me end this review with something that I actually liked about this book. If you basically turn your brain off, this can be a quick and fun read. The plot goes pretty off the rails going into the climax of the book and I did enjoy
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The only reason this isn’t 5-stars is because I hate when the main conflict is solved by a special process that we have only just learned about as it’s happening. I want to have at least a shot at guessing at the resolution.
Only thing stopping it from being 5 stars is how unbelievably cringe some of the fandom/fanfic stuff is.
This was an immensely frustrating read not because it was bad (a 3-star rating for me is pretty decent) but because it felt like there was so much wasted potential.
Many aspects of the book are so good but are weighed down by some baffling authorial choices. For example, Forging, one of the main mechanics of the magic system, is never shown and always happens off-page inexplicably despite it being central to the plot. It's just a baffling choice by the author that is unnecessarily confusing to readers.
Many aspects of the book are so good but are weighed down by some baffling authorial choices. For example, Forging, one of the main mechanics of the magic system, is never shown and always happens off-page inexplicably despite it being central to the plot. It's just a baffling choice by the author that is unnecessarily confusing to readers.