This was not it for me. Didn’t care much for the characters. The chemistry between the FMC and her male counterpart was rushed and didn’t feel real. 

I could feel my mood veering toward depressed while getting more and more into this and I’m just not wanting to ruin my mental health this summer so… nope!

This just didn’t capture me the way I was hoping it would. Were the book shorter I might stick around to finish, but I’m not feeling compelled to read nearly 400 pages of it at the moment.

Very interesting but not a book I’d read all the way through any time soon.

Man… I’m having the hardest time getting into the swing of things with this book and keep feeling reluctant to pick it up so I’m DNF’ing for now.

Genuinely was hoping I’d love this, and I think when I’m in the right mood it will be great. As it is, I’m just not feeling it right now. I think I’m getting more picky about my YA/not enjoying it quite as much as I used to.

The structure of this is so loose feeling… very little punctuation, no real delineation between sentences, no capitalization… between that and the bombardment of names (lots of British public figures) I’m not familiar with and trying to keep all the characters and their dialogue straight in my head I just couldn’t sink into the story and kept feeling I wasn’t retaining anything I was reading.

I loved Obreht’s first novel but just couldn’t connect with the characters in this one. Maybe I’ll come back to it? I like the bleak, harsh setting but it was dragging too much for me to get into.

I really wanted to love this but it fell very flat for me. The characters are one-dimensional and don’t feel tangible, and the budding relationship between two of the main characters seemed unbelievable and cheap. So many characters and things are introduced with very little world-building, and I didn’t care to see where the story went.

I was really excited about this but I just can’t get into it. I don’t understand what’s going on and I’m having a hard time connecting to the world and all of the new words being introduced.