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rainwatersparkHappy New Year! And I've got some book reviews...for books I didn't finish reading.
I feel like I've been DNF'ing a lot of books lately. Maybe it's because I listen to a lot of audiobooks now, and I often tend to stick it out with an audiobook longer than I would with a print/ebook---things like writing style bother me less in an audiobook than a print book, in which I'd usually end up DNF'ing after the first chapter.
A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
Genre: Adult, historical fantasy, queer romance
DNF about 60%.
I picked this up solely because it had Knives Out as a comp title, and I couldn't resist the idea of a murder mystery on a boat. So far, I've been disappointed by books that use Knives Out as a comp title, and this one was no exception.
Essentially, the murder mystery vanishes by the 50% mark, and the rest of the book is just a straight-up fantasy. The magic was interesting, but I found myself not caring about the characters enough to keep reading.
Five Survive by Holly Jackson
Genre: Young Adult, thriller
I DNF'ed this about a third of the way through and then skipped to the end.
I've had Holly Jackson's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder on my library holds for a while, simply because it seems so popular. But I ended up feeling very bored by Five Survive. I adore thrillers where the main characters are all keeping secrets from each other (such as You'll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus), but this one lost me. I felt like it took way too long to reach the central premise of the book as described in the summary; 25% of the book was a long time to spend reading about the characters arguing with each other as they're driving in an RV. The book also didn't do a good job at hinting that the characters were hiding secrets from each other, so there was very little tension in the beginning, either. And by the time the main characters' lives were in danger, I just didn't care enough about them to care about what was going on. So I skipped to the end, and it sounded like the plot got really dark and also broke a lot of suspension of disbelief.
Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan
Genre: Adult, fantasy
This one hurt to DNF at about 39%, because I adored Daughter of the Moon Goddess, the first book in the series. I may pick this book back up at a later point, though spoilers I've read about in reviews make me feel like I wouldn't have enjoyed the ending anyway.
My main problem with this book was that the episodic format of the plot didn't work for me. It worked in the first book because (1) that was a coming of age story, and (2) Xingyin always had an overarching goal---to free/return to her mother---which unified the episodic events. In this book, however, Xingyin feels very reactive as a character: the plot consists of her reacting to one danger to the next, and it was never clear where the plot was going overall.
Also, while I loved Xingyin in the first book, here she feels unnecessarily impulsive and reckless, and that soured my enjoyment of the book. Plus, both Liwei and Wenzhi felt like blank slates without any personality except "desperately in love with Xingyin."
(Deep, heavy sigh.)
I feel like I've been DNF'ing a lot of books lately. Maybe it's because I listen to a lot of audiobooks now, and I often tend to stick it out with an audiobook longer than I would with a print/ebook---things like writing style bother me less in an audiobook than a print book, in which I'd usually end up DNF'ing after the first chapter.
A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
Genre: Adult, historical fantasy, queer romance
DNF about 60%.
I picked this up solely because it had Knives Out as a comp title, and I couldn't resist the idea of a murder mystery on a boat. So far, I've been disappointed by books that use Knives Out as a comp title, and this one was no exception.
Essentially, the murder mystery vanishes by the 50% mark, and the rest of the book is just a straight-up fantasy. The magic was interesting, but I found myself not caring about the characters enough to keep reading.
Five Survive by Holly Jackson
Genre: Young Adult, thriller
I DNF'ed this about a third of the way through and then skipped to the end.
I've had Holly Jackson's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder on my library holds for a while, simply because it seems so popular. But I ended up feeling very bored by Five Survive. I adore thrillers where the main characters are all keeping secrets from each other (such as You'll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus), but this one lost me. I felt like it took way too long to reach the central premise of the book as described in the summary; 25% of the book was a long time to spend reading about the characters arguing with each other as they're driving in an RV. The book also didn't do a good job at hinting that the characters were hiding secrets from each other, so there was very little tension in the beginning, either. And by the time the main characters' lives were in danger, I just didn't care enough about them to care about what was going on. So I skipped to the end, and it sounded like the plot got really dark and also broke a lot of suspension of disbelief.
Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan
Genre: Adult, fantasy
This one hurt to DNF at about 39%, because I adored Daughter of the Moon Goddess, the first book in the series. I may pick this book back up at a later point, though spoilers I've read about in reviews make me feel like I wouldn't have enjoyed the ending anyway.
My main problem with this book was that the episodic format of the plot didn't work for me. It worked in the first book because (1) that was a coming of age story, and (2) Xingyin always had an overarching goal---to free/return to her mother---which unified the episodic events. In this book, however, Xingyin feels very reactive as a character: the plot consists of her reacting to one danger to the next, and it was never clear where the plot was going overall.
Also, while I loved Xingyin in the first book, here she feels unnecessarily impulsive and reckless, and that soured my enjoyment of the book. Plus, both Liwei and Wenzhi felt like blank slates without any personality except "desperately in love with Xingyin."
(Deep, heavy sigh.)
