The Kingdom of Sweets

Wow, finishing books so close together is really impressive for me. I received The Kingdom of Sweets from Book of the Month, and I chose it because it's inspired by The Nutcracker. I had vague memories of the ballet, but felt like I liked it. I also thought it'd be fun for Christmas.

I did really enjoy reading this book. I reached for it, looked forward to it. Last night I read for two hours in order to finish it. I go back and forth on my rating, between 2 or 3 stars. I lean towards 3 because of how much I wanted to finish the story, but I'm stuck at 2 because I noticed the flaws I will discuss while reading. I also realized more issues after finishing.

I don't want to discuss the plot in depth because I hate giving out spoilers. I also went in completely blind, which is my favorite way to read a book. My reviews are not plot descriptions because of this. The story is definitely inspired by The Nutcracker in a loose way. I read the plot of the ballet after finishing and I think Johansen did so much with what was there. There are moments that are directly taken and expanded on in a very interesting way. A new character is introduced, Natasha, and the story is from her point-of-view. Her twin is Clara, and Clara has always had everything: attention, beauty, love. Natasha sticks to the walls and is friends with servants. This dynamic works for them and they aren't enemies. But it fuels what happens in the story.

The momentum stayed up for me and I just wanted to know what would happen. However, in the last 30% or 40%, I started to feel like the story was falling flat. And that feeling stuck once the book ended. I hate to say this, but there was so much potential. Overall, I think this book suffered from a lack of editing. There are so many ideas: directly from the ballet, inspired by it, and newly formed. I suppose they don't mesh seamlessly. Early on in the book, I found repetition was common. In the actual Kingdom of Sweets, it makes sense to describe all the different sweets, but it became, well, annoying. This after this after this after this. These types of repetitive descriptions happened multiple times. The writing didn't feel clear, especially when describing a complicated idea. A few times, I simply couldn't understand what was happening.

One thing that bothered from the beginning was the fact that this book is nearly all exposition. Yes, there are scenes of dialogue and action. But only very key scenes are acted out in this way. Everything else is told to the reader by Natasha. At one point I though Johansen might be doing this on purpose since there is no speaking in a ballet, which is clever, but she does have scenes with dialogue. You can't really go halfway with that idea.

Yes, I read the book, and quickly, so how bad can it be? Could I recommend it? Perhaps. Just with the caveat that it is lackluster. It needed to be tightened up and polished.

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