octaviocilustrator

Huh. I read the advanced readers' copy, and am surprised to see that the love interest dude's name changed. Anyway. I have a major bone to pick with authors that protect their twist so much that they do not drop any meaningful hints until *bam* you are hit in the face with the twist. Then, in retrospect, you can say "ahhhh, I see what that sort of weird but not really thing from earlier was about" The first twist, I felt kind of cheated. The second twist I actually managed to see coming. It felt like for the first three quarters of this book nothing happened. And then when things started happening, they happened really quickly and got resolved much too neatly. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure why the action ended the way it did, it felt like the author was too close to a page number maximum and had to wrap things up super fast. I never really felt much chemistry from the two main characters, and in a book whose main plot is the supposed chemistry, that's probably not a good thing. Still, I think Claudia Gray shows some promise, and I wonder if she gets some more writing practice under her belt she may become quite good. She has a better ear for dialogue than many teen fiction writers I've read.

2022-10-21 05:38