A review by nicozzy
The Night Weaver, Volume 1 by Monique Snyman

2.0

This book started off so quick, there wasn’t a lot for me to stand on. So often it felt like I was reading the 2nd or 3rd book in a series because people and the town’s & Rachel’s history was referenced like I should know this already.

For one there’s zero world building. It appears like the setting is the ‘normal world: contemporary’. But when Rachel discovers a Black Annis - a Celtic forklore that was told to scare children - is not only a legend but is a real creature and is haunting her town & stealing children, she hardly even questions the discovery. Ugh and then comes the fae. She accidentally falls into a portal into the fae world and escapes fae captures with her cousin, Dougal. She doesn’t ask one question to Dougal about the fae - because apparently he knows fae are real, even though he seemed just as clueless as Rachel did when they set out looking for clues about the missing children.
How & when does he all of a sudden know these things?

There is almost no believable reaction made by Rachel or any of the characters, to what was happening in their town or what they were discovering.

Not to mention of the conversations between characters- particularly Greg & Rachel- is often awkward and stilted. I couldn’t help thinking - people don’t say things the way they did in a conversation.

I kept wondering why this book was compared to Twilight, until we meet Orion Blackwood. Orion is a fae prince hiding out in the mortal world. Apparently very attractive & powerful.
We get to glimpses of Orion’s past and how he’s connected to the Night Weaver. Even though the fae world does sound intriguing, once again there’s literally zero world building. Just all of sudden he has powers & apparently he has mastered 5 different magical abilities. Again, not very impressive when there’s no context.

Overall - this felt like a very underdeveloped story. It felt like the author had a lot of ideas so she put them all into one book and didn’t take the time to smooth things together and make it cohesive. It’s relatively short with 240 pages, so I’m not sure why the author didn’t expand on things. It’s disappointing because this felt like an interesting story if there was more to it besides surface level. Not to mention I loved the cover.