mxhermit's reviews
949 reviews

This book highlights the need for people to really communicate because it was the main crux of many of the issues. Going in, I thought it was a thriller, but this book was kind of mislabeled because while it has a mystery-ish element it lacks the hallmarks of a thriller. There's also a distasteful-ish characterization of one character revealed toward the end that I didn't care for in the least.

DNF @ 12%

Castle intrigue has a certain draw that would make me want to pick up a book. Castle of Lies has a promising plot description and one might think that they would be in for a, as said, an intriguing story of those without power rising up to take it.

Unfortunately, what I found were petty, childish machinations couple with writing that was dull enough to make me never want to pick this book up again.

This book was not to my taste. It was not enjoyable to read. The writing did not pull me in and I could not connect with a single character. There was no one that I wanted to know more about, nor a plot thread to grab onto if this indeed turned out to be a plot based story rather than a character driven one (some are and that's what it is).

The characters very exceedingly childish, from the way they spoke to the way they acted. It wasn't the fact that they were in their teens and acting appropriately to that age group, it was that they seemed to be absurdly foolish even then. Thelia, the main character, especially, had some notions that were painful to read about. She would go through the things her mother had taught her in order to survive in a world where women were seen as lesser, such as how to "cripple a man without messing up my braid", then in the next moment make sweeping assumptions about how the only thing necessary to change the whole toxic structure of society was her becoming queen. It was baffling to me that she would be built up as having some semblance of preparedness for the world around her but such a lack of clarity regarding real world politics.

Whatever political intrigue was hinted at by the premise of this book did not end up written well. The political "intrigue" read like children playing at politics. Like I said earlier, I guessed that the main characters are teens, but their supposed machinations made them read much younger and made it that much harder to take things seriously.

There were also some choices in setup that had me staring at the page, such as...the elves live on Magic. That seemed to literally be the name of their land, their island/country/whatever you want to call it. Like...what? And the humans lived on Kingdom? Add to that modern linguistic choices such as "dad", "daddy", and "mom", which took me out of the supposed fantasy setting, and the crafting of this world felt overly simplistic and did nothing to endear me to the book.

I couldn't get much further in this book because, for my part, it was incredibly dull to read. I wouldn't recommend it based on the writing style alone, much less the detractions I mentioned above, but add in those and this book really comes down the line. I'm disappointed because castle intrigue, magic, and teens plotting better destinies could have been truly epic.

Content/Trigger Warnings: blood, assault, torture, violence, brutal death, mutilation, sexual assault & rape, self harm

DNF @ 29%

We're all monsters...

Janneke, a human girl born the last in a long line of daughters, was raised to be her family's male heir. Instead, a brutal tragedy took place and she was stolen away by goblins to the Permafrost. One hundred years later and the Hunt is about to begin, a terrifying ordeal to choose the next Goblin King. What will this mean for Janneke's place, in this world where she's becoming something neither wholly human nor wholly goblin but scorned by both? Find out in Kara Barbieri's debut novel, White Stag.

I'd like to thank the team at Wednesday Books for inviting me to take part in the blog tour for White Stag and congratulate Kara on her debut novel hitting shelves.

The concept of the Wild Hunt, of the Goblin King's court, and of Janneke's upbringing as the last daughter/male heir drew me to this story because individually they sounded intriguing and together could have been even better. The combination sounded like the start of a potential magnificent fantasy, though that wasn't quite what I found myself reading.

I think there's an audience that may well enjoy this book, getting further into it and the depths that the characters get to, whether through thought or deed. I would advise checking out content/trigger warnings because it did get heavy at times for a variety of reasons, so there's that to consider. 

Personally, I wasn't quite comfortable reading it first and foremost because of what I viewed as the forced romantic setup between Janneke and Soren, the goblin lord who is her master.

When Janneke was first kidnapped after her family was slaughtered, she was brutalized by Soren's uncle and then cast aside to Soren's ownership. While he may well be a special, not-like-other-goblins in his own right, this is still an enormous power imbalance that was very unsettling, particularly with his continual use of lines that pushed her to give in to her body's changes via Permafrost adaptation into goblin-hood, as it were. Whenever Janneke would use the word companionship, and there were more than a few, it really drove home the feeling that I was witnessing a magical kind of Stockholm Syndrome and it wasn't pleasant.

Janneke as a person was a bit contradictory. Her tone from one moment to the next didn't seem to match up with her actions or even her internal thoughts, so understanding her was difficult, the other characters even less so. Soren barely seemed to act like a goblin, aside from some of physical attributes, and Lydian, the disgusting goblin that brutally assaulted Janneke during her first six months in the Permafrost, acted like an insane, petulant child when we meet him in the beginning of the book.

Which brings me to the issue of timing. White Stag takes place one hundred years after Janneke's abduction to the Permafrost, which makes sense because of the author's desire to have an established connection between her and Soren. However, by doing so and starting the action in the middle of the opening scenes at the Erlking's palace, it feels like the reader gets no history to connect them to the story. It just plops us in there and expects us to care about a political system and a people, both with complicated rules, without answering: why?

It's a pity that I couldn't enjoy a Goblin King fantasy more. While White Stag wasn't what I was expecting, I expect that there will be people who may like Janneke's tracking skill, hunting across the icy lands in search of the Stag. 

The underage "relationship" puts me off (17f if I remember correctly gets involved with the 29m father of her charge).

Thanks to viewing a Lifetime Christmas movie (Christmas Around the Corner, where the MC rents an apartment & manages the bookshop below for the Christmas holiday), I'd been looking for a story that was somewhat similar. The premise of The Little Bookshop on the Seine sounded like just the ticket.

Sarah Smith is a small town bookshop owner whose shop is struggling & whose freelance journalist boyfriend is more often abroad than at home. When her friend, who owns a bookshop in Paris, offers an exchange of locales for a time, Sarah impulsively says yes.

Sounds good, yes? Oh, would that it were.

I didn't get very far because first and foremost the writing style was not to my taste. There was no hook in the story, nothing to capture my interest. It was quite dull.

It was also hard to figure out how old Sarah, the main character, was. The way she was talking about other people, the way she mentioned her boyfriend being named before a famous one from an 80's soap, made her sound older than I think she was intended to be which made it confusing when in the second chapter she started acting...younger? I wasn't sure what the author meant the reader to think.

The interactions between Sarah and Ridge, the boyfriend, felt really awkward. I thought it was a setup to his being a creep or something, but apparently this (The Little Bookshop on the Seine) is not the first book they've appeared in together? There's nothing in the book (title page, etc.) to suggest that, so I had no idea, so the creep idea is less likely, but who knows? Whether they have a long standing relationship or not, I still found their phone conversation (Ridge is a freelance journalist who is often abroad) awkward and uncomfortable to read. It wasn't one I felt I could stomach reading, assuming Ridge did pop up later on in the book.

Shortly after this conversation, Sarah was contacted by her French friend, Sophie, owner of the Parisian bookshop, and I was done after that.

There's no build up, no gripping story angle. It's right into the exchange and that's so dull. It all happened too fast. The author didn't give the reader a chance to get to know Sarah or Sophie, never mind any of the secondary characters. Why should we care about either of their troubles? It's sad that Sarah might have to close the shop, sure, but in a very abstract sort of way.

A bookish The Holiday sounded like a nice seasonal read, but, unfortunately didn't make the mark.

No thank you, not ever.