A review by anitaforthewin
Spice Road by Maiya Ibrahim

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

2.75

The premise of the book was really interesting, but honestly the book failed in execution. Tea-based magic was the main descriptor of the books, but honesty it was barely used, and definitely not explored. The pacing was a mess, the characters were not well developed, and the writing was so irritating. The author tried to sound smarter than she was, and ended up writing prose that was unnecessarily punctuated by big thesaurus words and strange turns of phrase. There was an attempt to do an enemies to lovers but it felt like I was getting whiplash when the characters would go from caring about each other to hating each other -- in the space of a sentence, sometimes within the same sentence. I had very high hopes for this book, but I just don't think the author had the ability to execute her ideas into a book and it really shows. 
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