Reviews with content warning for Death - Lightlark

The fantasy aspect had me sold but once I read it, I did not appreciate how the only representation is shoved onto the same character who's more of a background character than a side character and the fact that the love interests are 500+ years older than the MC who's only 20 years old. This book had so much potential, it disappointed me. I was promised a Hunger Games type of book, let me tell you, it's not that.

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katvou's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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selestre's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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kaetheluise_nckl's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

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kenziewol's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

I know there are a lot of opinions about this book, but I genuinely enjoyed it. I enjoyed the plot, the main characters, and I was surprised by the ending. It is YA so there’s no outright spice, but I thought the tension between characters was done well. I do wish we got more focus on the world and the island though, while I found what was happening interesting, I found myself wanting more explanations on a few things. But overall I thought It was a descent YA fantasy and I plan on reading the next book.

As far as the popular criticisms I did see them come up & agree with some..

There are a few places where the writing was spotty (a couple descriptions using the word “thingy” & some sentence structures could’ve been better) but that was mostly just in the first couple of chapters and then I didn’t feel like I noticed much.

Overall I felt the writing was easy to understand and was not bad writing by any means and on par with other YA fantasy books. The way people had been talking about the writing, I was expecting waaaay worse.

I do wish the names for the places and people were a little more creative than “Sunlings,” Moonlings,” “Skylings”, etc but that wasn’t a deal breaker for me.

At the end of the day I enjoyed it for what it was and tried to not hold it to what I thought it should be or what I had seen on other reviews. Unfortunately it’s hard to do that completely with all of the discourse about this book, but I felt it was enjoyable and a descent YA fantasy book. If you liked ACOTAR or TOG I think there’s a good chance you would enjoy this.

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