Reviews

The Bitter Twins by Jen Williams

akane's review

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adventurous challenging emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

ryanwhitley's review against another edition

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

2.0

I really loved the first book. This one…drug on and on. The beginning was exciting; the ending dramatic and emotional. The middle was a slog. I cared very much for the characters of Vintage, Tor, and Noon. The other characters I found I was not interested in at all. When the Hentillion POV chapters came up, I groaned. I think this book suffers from middle book syndrome and a bit more. Unfortunately, I do not think I’ll go on to finish the trilogy. 

gabirose's review against another edition

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2.0

This needed a heavy handed edit. Too much going on without a clear plot to drive events forward. 

nenabowman's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

5.0

crimsoncor's review against another edition

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4.0

Parts of this are weak,
Spoiler Hest's heel turn is sudden and never properly explained
. But overall it is a very well done series and it is enjoyable watching the layers of this world's history being peeled back and the impact that has on its people

cjgillen's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

saadiyya_reads786's review against another edition

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5.0

Wow...I loved it. I think it becoming one of my favorite series.

pinxsol's review against another edition

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4.0

First of all, books named after weapons are badass, not gonna lie.

But the fact that this whole book spans only about two weeks is preposterous. That's 600 pages. And it still somehow felt rushed at times. I think that fact alone makes it obvious that sometimes, there are simply too many POVs to go through if you want to do all of your characters justice. There are some chapters that feel redundant, and don't further the plot at all. I think Hestillion's POV could've been largely cut, to be honest. An element of surprise with her development would've been nice, but besides that, the sheer amount of rage I felt reading her POV was slowly turning me into the Joker. She's such a selfish character that she's ready to physically and mentally torture everyone she loves because, well, her feelings were offended by a non-sentient tree. And her huge amount of plot armor has kept people from killing her on at least 3 separate occasions in this book alone. Infuriating.

Furthermore, I expected something else (perhaps something more) from the Finneral plotline. That's the part that felt the most rushed to me - the fact that there were just snatches of scenes before the big thing happened. And I think it's because of that that the scenes between Bern and Aldasair ended up not feeling entirely organic to me. I really wanted the calm before the storm moment in Finneral to happen, but it just didn't.

That said, I really enjoyed the expedition part. It was given perhaps even a bit too much time imo, with some chapters that felt meandering. I really loved how brutal it was, though.

Overall, I think my feelings on this one are: holy shit, this was stressful to read. I had to stop several times to distract myself because at one point around 300 pages in I was constantly worried about every character I was rooting for. They were just all in some danger or another. The final battle felt a bit boring to me, but the resolution was SO funny (gay power!!) that it didn't matter.

novelshire's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

cadmanreads's review against another edition

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5.0

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