The Midnight Gardener

I received a copy of this book through Net Galley.

I have pretty mixed feeling about this one. On one hand, it definitely has its charms, and I enjoyed reading it. But it really feels like a rough draft. It needs a lot of polish, but at the same time there's a lot here that works if you don't take it too seriously.

The dialogue could use some tightening, it shifts between pretty decent and oddly stilted. The plot, and the book as a whole, really needed more room to breathe. If it had spent more time building atmosphere, building the world, developing the characters, (and maybe including some much-needed foreshadowing of the events to come) I would have more interest in reading the next book in the series. The cliffhanger isn't even really a cliffhanger, just a bizarre stop in the middle of the action. In my opinion, the mark of a great series is when every book has a satisfying story and arc without this frustrating method of “Buy book 2 to find out what happens next!”

So yeah, the book has flaws. Quite a few, in fact. But despite all that, I had fun with it. I'd rank it at about 2.5 stars, with a lot of room for improvement.