A review by talapowis
Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston
2.0
I wanted to like this book. In the end, it was readable, but barely.
The story is a bit slow starting, but not terribly. Throughout, the characters are decent, but they don’t have much depth plus sometimes a few of the side characters do/say things that probably wouldn’t actually happen irl.
At the beginning of the story it’s obvious that fox is the prince but not until the very end does he realize. Plus, the main character is constantly saying how she can’t save everyone because she’s just the gardener’s daughter, which get’s real tiring when she mentions it every instance possible and up until the very end.
I could live with ^ but what really bothered me was the lack of explanation throughout the story. There’s a random bear that supposably is the only ancient to not become crazy/tainted by the forest. Why??? Never explained. And, worst of all, at the crux of the storyline when the crown is destroyed, instead of explaining WHY and the backstory of how the lady of the forest was stuck in it etc etc etc the author simply ends the chapter and then picks up the story SIX MONTHS LATER. And barely explains things then. Plus some characters that were killed off (bear and the rest of the town who were bone eaters) or fox who was returned to a fox body or the guy who was a corpse are all a-okay and more or less alive/back to normal. It was just super confusing and disappointing, and I felt like I’d somehow missed an entire chapter.
Wish I’d liked it better, but oh well.
The story is a bit slow starting, but not terribly. Throughout, the characters are decent, but they don’t have much depth plus sometimes a few of the side characters do/say things that probably wouldn’t actually happen irl.
At the beginning of the story it’s obvious that fox is the prince but not until the very end does he realize. Plus, the main character is constantly saying how she can’t save everyone because she’s just the gardener’s daughter, which get’s real tiring when she mentions it every instance possible and up until the very end.
I could live with ^ but what really bothered me was the lack of explanation throughout the story. There’s a random bear that supposably is the only ancient to not become crazy/tainted by the forest. Why??? Never explained. And, worst of all, at the crux of the storyline when the crown is destroyed, instead of explaining WHY and the backstory of how the lady of the forest was stuck in it etc etc etc the author simply ends the chapter and then picks up the story SIX MONTHS LATER. And barely explains things then. Plus some characters that were killed off (bear and the rest of the town who were bone eaters) or fox who was returned to a fox body or the guy who was a corpse are all a-okay and more or less alive/back to normal. It was just super confusing and disappointing, and I felt like I’d somehow missed an entire chapter.
Wish I’d liked it better, but oh well.