Reviews with content warning for War - The Secret Book Of Flora Lea

Reviews tagging 'War'

The Secret Book Of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry

42 reviews

bookish_leslie's review against another edition

hopeful mysterious slow-paced

3.75

Overall, I’m glad I read this book, but it confused me because I should have liked it more than I did. It had many of the story elements that I love:

An interesting premise
A mystery
Beautiful descriptions of atmosphere/place
A hint of fairytale magic

But sadly, for me, it fell a bit flat.

Pacing: First of all, the pacing was off. It was soooo slow through most of the book, and then the ending was quite rushed. I could only read small sections of this book at a time before wanting to put it down, and then it was often difficult to pick back up again.

Characters: I also couldn't connect emotionally with the characters. They were all just a bit stiff and flat, and it was hard to care about any of them or what they were going through.

Writing: I enjoyed the way the author described the different settings and also how she talked about stories and fairytales. I’m a sucker for words that flow in poetic ways.

“Not very long ago and not very far away, there once was and still is an invisible place right here with us. And if you are born knowing, you will find your way through the woodlands to the shimmering doors that lead to the land made just and exactly for you.”

With that being said, I occasionally had to re-read sentences. The dialogue felt stiff. Certain parts didn’t fit or flow together very well - to such an extent that I sometimes thought I’d accidentally skipped a page, but hadn’t. It was often repetitive, and the Peggy Andrews storyline was particularly awkward and under-developed.

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taryn_g's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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kristyvaldez's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

2.75

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mdavis26's review against another edition

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5.0

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amybartoli29's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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lmayfieldx's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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readingonfordearlife's review against another edition

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emotional informative mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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bxnnny's review against another edition

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adventurous informative mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

i really wanted to like this book and it was something i chose in order to branch out from my normal reading habits of horror and mystery. though this still had an element of mystery, it didn't really hit the mark for me. i found that the constant back-and-forth time jumps made the story feel disjointed and caused me to have a hard time focusing. i understand the point of the time jumps but didn't feel they needed to be as frequent as they were. i also found a lot of parts to be just fluff without any real substance or necessity. wren as a character felt completely unnecessary, i didn't understand barnaby's weird and constant ultimatums and just straight up being an ass about everything, and i even found some parts with harry to be just boring fluff. you probably could have removed all three of these characters and would have ended up with the same story (okay, maybe keep harry, but still). i overall just felt that the author was trying to write a beautiful story with a deep meaning and a thoughtful message but it honestly just felt so surface-level to me. it felt more like a skeleton of a story than a fully flesh-out one. i don't know. it just didn't do it for me, which is unfortunate. (also, take a shot for every time tolkien or the hobbit is referenced lmao)

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jmyodafriend's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful informative mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

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kathrynw12's review against another edition

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hopeful mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This was an interesting premise for a book and definitely an interesting story. But the writing itself was not great. Children don’t speak the way they do in this book, nor do adults. There’s also one scene towards the end where the characters and narrative just repeated themselves in a circle. There was one POV that didn’t need to be there at all.

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