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A review by ciphertextx
A River of Royal Blood by Amanda Joy
2.0
Short review because I'm slowly losing the will to leave detailed reviews on books I don't like. 1.5 stars out of 5.
The writing was excessively tell-y which meant there was nothing subtle about anything and the style was repetitive. All "she was, he felt, she did, he was", which made it boring and uninspiring. Pacing - all over the place.
At times the story seemed to drag (maybe something to do with the fact that I didn't care about any of these characters at all, the book is only 350 pages), but at other points, Big Dramatic Events just seemed to happen one after the other like something out of a soap opera. And after almost every Big Dramatic Event, Eva the main character passed out, which conveniently left the other characters to deal with the fallout while we don't see any of that because Eva is unconscious.
Like I said, I didn't care about any of the characters. They didn't feel like real people at all, only like wacky action characters in a plot that lacked originality and substance and emotion. I was only vaguely interested in Baccha for half a second before I realised he had no substance too.
Plot twists/Big Reveals... Well, I won't spoil, but they were extremely obvious, to the point that I was more annoyed when they came out instead of having that "OMG" moment that I should have had.
Honestly, I found the book boring and badly-written, and I would have DNF'd it if I hadn't been buddy reading it. One of the most disappointing books to come in one of my FairyLoot boxes ever. And the sad thing is, the book sounded exciting when I read the summary, but then I read it and I was just...so disappointed. Especially when some of my book friends told me that everything in this book was extremely close to some other very popular books, so it all felt even less original than I first thought.
Just bleh. I'm disappointed.
The writing was excessively tell-y which meant there was nothing subtle about anything and the style was repetitive. All "she was, he felt, she did, he was", which made it boring and uninspiring. Pacing - all over the place.
At times the story seemed to drag (maybe something to do with the fact that I didn't care about any of these characters at all, the book is only 350 pages), but at other points, Big Dramatic Events just seemed to happen one after the other like something out of a soap opera. And after almost every Big Dramatic Event, Eva the main character passed out, which conveniently left the other characters to deal with the fallout while we don't see any of that because Eva is unconscious.
Like I said, I didn't care about any of the characters. They didn't feel like real people at all, only like wacky action characters in a plot that lacked originality and substance and emotion. I was only vaguely interested in Baccha for half a second before I realised he had no substance too.
Plot twists/Big Reveals... Well, I won't spoil, but they were extremely obvious, to the point that I was more annoyed when they came out instead of having that "OMG" moment that I should have had.
Honestly, I found the book boring and badly-written, and I would have DNF'd it if I hadn't been buddy reading it. One of the most disappointing books to come in one of my FairyLoot boxes ever. And the sad thing is, the book sounded exciting when I read the summary, but then I read it and I was just...so disappointed. Especially when some of my book friends told me that everything in this book was extremely close to some other very popular books, so it all felt even less original than I first thought.
Just bleh. I'm disappointed.