Howdy YAL!

Full disclosure.  I DNF’d this one around page eighty.  I’ll probably be giving it away in a give away at some point.  I think I read enough though to give a review of why it didn’t work for me.

Anyway, I was excited about this book.  I  had it on my TBR list for awhile, and saved reading it for this week-Halloween week.  The thing is, it did not work for me.

I was expecting instant love, but what I wasn’t expecting was some fucked up world building (meaning, lots and lots of info dump).

In theory, I should’ve loved this.  A lot of the world is heavily rooted in Pre-Columbian America, but I just couldn’t connect.  And when there was a random naked ritual that sounded borderline like an orgy.  I left the building.

I read Brave New World, that’s enough orgy porgy for a lifetime, thank you very much.

The random naked trope just annoys me.  It’s not because I’m a prude, but random moments of nakedness with no explanation other than to make the main character uncomfortable and add sexual undertones to the story just doesn’t work for me.

It also doesn’t help when eighty pages into the book, the characters remind me of cardboard cut outs.  The main character clearly has the YA Little Miss Special Snowflake going on for her.  Her brother is playing the role of the token best friend.  And her mother’s a deadbeat.  I didn’t stay long enough to meet the love interest, but I don’t think I could’ve handled the pain.

Despite being annoyed with the cliches this book used and the main character, I will say that it moved first.  But there was just something weird about this book.  Something that didn’t connect with me so I DNF’d it.

So in the end, I’m not sure if I DNF’d it because it really didn’t work for me.  I’m not sure if it’s so much because the book wasn’t for me or that it suffered from structural and character issues.

I can’t recommend it, but at the same time I can’t say it’s truly awful.  Because I really see some people liking this better than me.