Last night I read a book, it was fairly short and it was an e-arc given to me by Netgalley. I was definitely declined a lot of the bigger, more popular titles which I had really, really, really wanted to read. When I first made an account I requested things I didn't actually want to read I just wanted arcs and free books, that was 2-3 years ago and I hadn't really requested anything since. So my reviewer score is a measly 65% so I'm trying to increase that number by reading the things I want to read and actually getting my score up. I want to do better, but as I realized that I also realized I had to make my way through a few books that aren't necessarily brilliant.... Which is why I think this blog post is important. The book I read last night, was in reality a 0 stars, I hated it. There was nothing good about it, and I felt bad... very bad... I started to type out my review for netgalley and kept thinking how I wouldn't post it on social media or goodreads because it was too mean. I also didn't want to author to read it because I have nothing but respect for her, it takes a lot of guts to write and publish a novel, guts which I'm severely lacking.
So here is my first version of the review, I changed the names because I don't want to diss the author, so this book will be a mystery for you guys so please respect that it's probably not a book you know.
I read this book in one sitting and wasn't very impressed to be honest. It was sort of worth reading but it felt very religious, focusing on Christianity with a smattering of beauty and the beast retelling. I loved John as a character but I don't why he fell in love with Jane? Jane, the main character is horrible, she's judgmental and brash and she doesn't get better. She didn't even feel bad for shooting John twice?! There was no character growth in her character throughout the book, she's treated as perfect even though she really doesn't care for logic. She had many opportunities to learn and grow and she ignores them all but people still love her? Overall, all the characters are stereotypical and I don't think I could suffer through what everyone is wearing everyday for clothes. Especially when the author felt the need to make a character description list in the beginning of the book(which I skipped reading because I felt it unnecessarily boring). I didn't like the chapter headings because I didn't understand the need to over complicate the simplest story I've read. Were the meanings of the chapter headings in that over complicated beginning that we're expected to remember? Also what time period is this in? I'm confused, they don't seem to have modern conveniences she uses words like tunic and tavern but also guns, and hospitals? The world building wasn't fleshed out enough for me to understand. I don't even know. The author killed my favorite character but I think I only liked him because he didn't love Jane blindly like the rest of the characters. Also what was the curse? Was that the story? Was it the main plot because I'm not convinced there even needed to be a curse it was that unimportant. There really was no plot for this book. Any plot introduced in this book, is obviously getting saved for another book which I won't be reading.
Obviously I had some pretty strong feelings that weren't constructive to the author but flat out mean. So I reworked it to sound more professional, and I got rid of all the information that was actually unnecessary. Here's the second draft:
I read this book in one sitting and wasn't very impressed to be honest. It was sort of worth reading but it felt very religious, focusing on Christianity with a smattering of beauty and the beast retelling. I loved John as a character but I don't why he fell in love with Jane? Jane, the main character is horrible, she's judgmental and brash and she doesn't get better. None of the characters had any character growth, they stayed 1 dimensional throughout the entire book. I didn't feel like the character descriptions and glossary in the beginning of the book was necessary, it was overly complicated and boring. The world building wasn't fleshed out enough for me to understand it. There really was no plot for this book. Any plot introduced in this book, is obviously getting saved for another book which I won't be reading.
And because I still felt like it was overly harsh and my spouse thought it was important to mention the lack of character growth, I added that part back in but I also tried my best to add in some positive. And after reflecting on this whole process, I realized I would be willing to give this author another shot in the sequel even I only gave their book a 1/5 stars. I did mange to have two nice things to say and I feel like even though my review still isn't nice, per se.... it's better than it was. And I don't feel like a shit human for this last one.
I read this book in one sitting and wasn't very impressed to be honest. It was sort of worth reading but it felt very religious, focusing on Christianity with a smattering of beauty and the beast retelling. I loved John as a character but I don't why he fell in love with Jane? Jane, the main character is horrible, she's judgmental and brash and she doesn't get better. None of the characters had any character growth, they stayed 1 dimensional throughout the entire book. I didn't feel like the character descriptions and glossary in the beginning of the book was necessary, it was overly complicated and boring. The world building wasn't fleshed out enough for me to understand it. There really was no plot for this book. Any plot introduced in this book, is obviously getting saved for another book which I would consider reading to give this author another chance to grow. This author's style obviously just wasn't for me but maybe read this if you want to support debut authors and enjoy Beauty and the Beast retellings where women can be badass.
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