Before you come at me with a wooden pickle filed down into a nice, sharp point, just know that I'm even more shocked than you are that I'm rating this book so low.
Brigid Kemmerer is one of my very favorite writers... of contemporary YA fiction. Now, I did enjoy A Curse So Dark and Lonely for what it was worth. Although the magical world building wasn't really all there, the characters were engaging enough and interesting enough to keep me flipping those pages. I think that character-driven stories are what this author truly excels at. Her plots are alright, though it's really the characters that suck you into her stories. However, that's the EXACT reason why this book fell so flat for me.
You see, these characters, Grey and Lia Mara (or whatever her name was omg am I getting old?), well... they were nothing to write home about. In fact, even though the story were told from alternating POVs of these two characters for the most part, I could hardly tell them apart. They were so flat, so BORING.
Overall, that's how I kept finding myself throughout the large chunk of it that I forced myself to read - just bored. There was even a quote in this book that really resonated with me. Let me clear my throat and recite it with vigor. Okay, I'm ready.
Rhen was bored.
Me too, bruh. Me too.
I just could not get into this for the life of me, which is a bitter disappointment because, as I said before, this is one of my all-time favorite writers. Honestly, I hope that Brigid veers away from fantasy writing, since I would not say it's her strong suit. I will most definitely keep gobbling up all of her contemporary works, and I hope to Gooplah or whoever it is in the sky that controls the rate of the growth of my chin hairs that she will put out many more contemporary YAs to come.
Bye bye, now. *slowly disappears back into my corner of the internet*