A review by callme_tippy
Tender Beasts by Liselle Sambury

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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***Below review contains unhidden spoilers!***


This book was way too long!

(Keep in mind that I am writing this as someone that loves horror, but doesn't like YA all that much.) 

With 400+ pages you would think the book would make more sense. Honestly we could have done without 200 of those 400 pages.  

Things I did not like:
  • Sunny's overall attitude, like are we supposed to like her at all, because she's pretty annoying. How are we meant to like a character that is fake 100% of the time with literally everyone?? 
  • Are we meant to believe that Sunny is that good of an actor all of her life that her siblings are surprised at her just saying she's not okay? far fetched! 
  • Besides Sunny, all of the rest of the siblings are super flat and very "character 101" (not to mention also unlikeable).
  • The only person I kind of liked was Dom and that's mostly because I felt bad for him for how his family treated him since we don't get to learn much about him. 
  • Every scene with Sunny interacting with her boyfriend and "friends" was useless, added nothing to the story, and could have been taken out of the book completely. 
  • The lore, don't even get me started, not only is lore confusing, it also doesn't make any sense! Am I supposed to believe this whole Milk Man thing started with a little girls "game". Where did she learn this game? Why did her parents and all the adults follow along? Were they all maidens? If so who were the calves? I'm still so very confused!
  • 200 of those pages could have been used to flesh out the Milk Man lore and actually make a storyline that actually made sense. Instead we get useless interactions with people that the main character hates and adds nothing to the book. 
  • We're supposed to believe that a grown, smart, business savvy women, wanted her 18 year old daughter to run the family with the instructions in a diary she left behind? A diary that's convoluted and confusing at that! 
  • So the whole family was okay with one child being treated like a non-member and sub-human for his whole life and no one questioned this? Okay. 
  • I'm annoyed that we got the diary info before Sunny got it, in fact Sunny didn't know what was in the diary until after the book was practically over!
  • What exactly does this Milk Man do?? Like can we have more back story on this lore please? Maybe it would come together more if so. 
  • Those stupid nursey rhymes drove me up a wall!
  • All the bear imagery and literal bear memorabilia only for it be because her father gave her mother bear keychain when they were children? what? I get that it's a play on their last name but they made it seem like it meant more only for it to fall flat. 
  • The father didn't want to mercy kill his brother in jail in order to have this Milk Man stop cursing/helping their family or whatever. But instead he is okay with his son being a Milk Man calf that does his bidding and he would treat his son as sub-human and exclude him from the family. That doesn't make any sense! Especially because the father has killed other people too!
  • We're supposed to believe that as a child her sister was able to kill a woman and somehow did this with out the police seeing anything wrong with that or discovering it was her???

I so wish the author would have heavily leaned one way or the other. Either make it that her whole family is delusional and they don't want to accept the fact that they are actually not good people and enjoy killing small animals, or make it heavy on the occult. 

I would have preferred the occult version I think. It could have been so creepy. 
Imagine if Sunny was a regular level of annoying but still likeable and always noticed something weird about her family. 
Imagine she wanted to build a relationship with Dom, but her family always deterred and stopped her. Imagine she'd see creepy stuff over the years but always explained it away, or wondered what was up with family. 
Imagine the lore actually made sense and was creepy. 
Imagine she found her mothers diary and was super confused and creeped out by it, but we only got it in bits and pieces because she had to sneak to read it.
Imagine all of this going on while all the stuff with Dom was still going on. 
How great would that have been?!

I so wanted to like this book, I'm giving 2 stars because at around 200 pages it stared to pick up and it kept me guessing, but that ending was lack luster and flat. A magic book? Really? Give me break.


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