Patricia

WARNING: Spoiler riddled Rant ahead

This book is... so bad. The most convoluted thing ever. Am I supposed to believe that human beings behave like this?

Hello, I am Verity and I am (not) a psychopath, let me just write all about it and my crimes in a manuscript and print it and leave it lying around where anyone can read it.

And I am Jeremy, the husband and I spent years and years with my wife but I'm gonna believe this random stuff I read off her computer. I don't even ask her or confront her, I just decide she's guilty and I never think it's strange that she has that on her computer with easy access at any time.

And I am the main female character (I literally do NOT know her name and I finished this 10 minutes ago) and I'm gonna insta love the male protagonist because of course and I'll discover the manuscript and I'll never stop to think HOW STUPID IT IS TO PUT YOUR CRIMES IN WRITING AND PRINTING THEM!!!

Ok I feel much better.

This book is trashy, and I'm not even talking about the cringe sex scenes taken out of pornhub. It lacks consistency, remarkable characters, originality and most of all... it just makes no sense at all. I mean come on, Verity managed to fool doctors and nurses about her condition? What, are there no CAT scans where she was, monitoring equipment, people who went to... you know, medical school and can tell a fake coma from a real coma? If you told me she bribed someone, then... maybe. But she didn't, she just fooled everyone because what? Why? Why the heck wouldn't you just run to the police if your husband tried to kill you?

Really the characters were so... dumb. And inconsistent. So Verity's supposed crimes were abominable, but Jeremy's crimes were just ok and justified? A-ok then.

I'm not even sure what the ending was supposed to be about. Was she innocent? Was she guilty? Is it up for interpretation? Because in these kinds of books it SHOULDN'T be up for interpretation. To be honest the last chapter is too convoluted for words. I didn't get it. This is NOT a twist. It's just a senseless ending.

This... was as bad as a soap opera. Not sure where the high rating is coming from. I tell you, this book makes no sense. At all. It just doesn't add up. Makes no sense. Or maybe it's a highly sophisticated thriller that I didn't get.

RATING: 1.5 stars

Was the mystery in the room with us? Yeah, no. Not sure what the author intended exactly but don't go into this expecting a psychological thriller because this is not it.

I think this is supposed to be a character study. Except it didn't work because it's disjointed and makes no sense. The prose is whimsical with metaphors that don't exactly do the trick or feel off. The whole book feels off as if it's a family portrait on acid. The people don't look quite human, the setting doesn't seem quite real. Kind of sad for a character study.

The glamorizing of mental illness wasn't great either. (Trigger warning: cutting, smoking and drugs) Everyone was mentally ill in some fashion but it was a "chic" mental illness. The protagonist is a cutter but she doesn't just cut, no. She does it fashionably by engraving her skin with a dictionary worth of pretentious words that she recalls at the most inappropriate moments, by "feeling" the words in the places where the scars are. It was very romanticized and at the same time brushed aside, if it makes sense. The kids in this book were OBVIOUSLY not alright but the protagonist just goes with it smoking joints and doing ecstasy with 13 year olds. Sure why not. It's not weird at all that 13 year olds are doing drugs and drinking beer in daylight. And it's perfectly normal to comment calmly about how the same 13 year olds got another kid drunk and "offered her to the boys". I could feel the teacher shrugging indolently (see Gillian this here is appropriate use of a figure of speech if I can say so myself) while telling all this to Camille, the main character.

I mean this book is just bad. It's a pretentious attempt at a somewhat literary character study with some psychological mystery thrown in for color. The story, setting, characters and prose don't land. It's unpolished to the point of feeling clownish. So if the author was going for dark, disturbing and edgy, no. I spent the whole time annoyed by the torrent of words, the trite dialogue and the setting felt more like 1970s instead of early 2000s. It felt like the author just jotted down ideas that Might Shock People(TM) and then threw them at the paper (or word document).

Go for Gone Girl instead.

RATING: 2 stars

I think I finally understand what makes me uneasy (if that is the right word) about T. Kingfisher's books. It starts pretty well, with an interest premise, but then it kind of develops to something more and more convoluted as the book goes by. The world building stays behind as a result. I think the author has too many ideas to cram into one book. In this case, being a retelling of Snow White, she had to include poisons, mirrors, evil queens and apples. And Snow White, that is kind of a very secondary character in this book.

The plot gets really weird when she starts explaining the mirrors. This took a sizable chunk of the book and was pretty convoluted, sometimes boring and it... didn't fit. It's like she has all these good ideas, but each needs development because they won't work well without it, but she doesn't pay the same attention to any of them.

The world itself is largely not explained. Medicine has blood letting, but they know about bacteria and how the body works too much to think blood letting is a good treatment. The medical knowledge seems to be early 1900s level, but the treatments are medieval. And... what about the rest of it? Was there magic, wasn't there magic? I think there were unicorns but I'm not sure? We never got a definitive answer about the magic

So the worldbuilding never really does it for me. Too many concepts crammed into one book. Her books actually need to be longer so she can develop coherent and well explained societies, magic systems and all the other things fantasy books need.

That said, Kingfisher does have awesome ideas and writes well, so maybe I won't give up on her quite yet. :)

RATING: 3.5 stars

I overall liked it, but it is pure romantasy. The world building is incipient and there to support the character's relationship nothing more, which annoys me to no end when I see glimpses of potential in the world or magic system. And I must say I wasn't fond of the ending it felt forced just to push out a sequel.

Some of this rating is because of the gargoyle, who waa, without a doubt my favorite character.

Anyway romantasy is all well and good but where IS good fantasy nowadays? With solid worldbuilding, I mean. Heck I'd prefer no romance at all...

RATING: 4 stars

Now THAT is how you do a character study based plot. Needed more Alice, the character I thought was a little underdeveloped and needed more fleshing out, but can't complain about the rest. The mystery parts were predictable from early on, but then again the mystery is there so we can piece the whole story of the characters together.