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madarauchiha's review against another edition
slow-paced
0.25
❤️ 🧡 💛 💚 💙 💜 my about / byf / CW info carrd: uchiha-madara 💜 💙 💚 💛 🧡 ❤️
I have a bad habit of starting and finishing books without checking the genre. Often times I find myself getting rather frustrated and fed up at the poor quality writing and terrible plots. Then, when I go to leave a review, I found out they are YA genre. Which explains the crappy prose and lousy character development and horrible plot.
Not this one though. This.. Hm. Sometimes the writing is great and other times it's choppy. Short sentences. Trying to. Emphasize panic? Or add artistic. Tension. Question mark?
I feel like romy was a real bad name to use by no fault if the author. I keep reading romney, as in that politician. I had to use a name replacement to keep it together. That's why all the quotes say DEMONGIRL instead of romy. All of the characters were bland and ordinary, so I have to change the names to keep track of who the fuck was who. Calum was MLI [male love interest], Kira was MC, Matthew was DAD.
The pacing is pleasantly consistent. It's just unfortunate that the plot takes far too long to go anywhere, resulting in a plodding circus walking home in the rain. The tension is lost, the horror benignly familiar and eternally distant. The book is extremely thrilled about chapter cliff hangers and at some point aka chapter 15 its become really tedious. It isn't until chapter 30 that anything happens. Yes that's right, 30, out of a 41 page novel. There are about 15-20 chapters that haphazardly moves characters from place to place, erodes any goodwill or hope for their survival, doesn't really give much backstory on why we should care about them, etc etc.
Some chapters are barely two pages long. One chapter only serves to remind us that there's other characters. I guess that's nice. its a break between endlessly flipping back and forth between the two main mcs. I personally find it irritating because I'm counting how many Chapters I have left and woops, one isn't really a chapter, its just a pov blip. love to be mislead, sarcastic heart emoji. Also, by the way, the other characters have no impact on the story. Not really. Like one time the two MCs were saved by two random characters and that's about it. Honestly the other characters were probably meant to flesh out the bad guys / haunted forest lore but they don't do much of that either. So they just... exist. They're flavor text. Like when you go up to a trash can in a video game and interact and the text box pops up to say 'hey it's a cute green trash can!'. That's it.
No really, all the MC does is get shuttles from place to place by outside forces. Not even ghostly malevolent ones. Oh I'm going to confront my parents about knowing something regarding their mentally ill daughter? Nah I'm going over to male love interest's place to get drunk and sleep. She's about 18 BTW, why is she getting drunk? I guess it's the only place she can in switzerland. [I assume she's american].
An example of the MC going places and doing nothing is this. MC has reasonable doubt and thinks Person knows something. MC confronts Person but they deny it and are mildly interrupted. MC immediately gives up and storms off, learning nothing and failing to move the plot forward. MC finds Male Love Interest, gets drunk, and passes out. This is the entire chapter. You'll notice the theme of the MC passing out continues through the book. It's almost as if the author doesn't know what to do next so they make the character black out and have someone else move the plot around the MC to continue on.
I really do hate how men rescue her constantly. Like not to be a feminist except I am and I'd like to know why a man has to rescue her. We have two reasons for her to break out of the false reality beach scene. Her sister and her mother. Both of whom have gone missing. Why is she not questioning where her sister and mother are during this beach reality? Why is the man there to make her snap out of it? Like fuck off goddamn.
'We are.’ Stubbornly, Kira wrenches against him. ‘Let me go. I’m not a little girl, and if I want to leave, you can’t stop me. Ah!’
Callum lets her go, and she topples. Before she can struggle back up, he pushes her down, pins her arms, and traps her legs between his own. Aggravation blasts through her. Yet again, she’s wedged fast.
‘Why do people do this?’ She growls. Apart from her feet, head, and hands, none of her limbs will budge. ‘In the Kyo, they used magic. The dream you used force. He held me to a wall until I listened.’ Glowering, she tugs on her wrists. ‘The real you has done that, too, if you recall. Hey.’ She ramps up her wrenching as Callum starts to smirk. ‘It’s not funny. I was saving your life.’
‘No, you weren’t. You were being a martyr.’ Although his trap doesn’t loosen, his anger melts away. ‘And it really is quite funny.’ He bows his head, puffing out a laugh. ‘Amazing. That’s what it is. You’re so impossible that live people, dead people, and dream characters come to the same conclusion: if you need to listen, you have to be restrained. I’m sorry, but that’s funny. Oi.’
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT. WE'VE GONE FROM NEUTRALLY UNFEMINIST TO THIS. THE WOMAN IS HYSTERICAL AND TO BE HELD DOWN BY A BIG STRING MAN UNTIL SHE SEES (HIS) SENSE. It's not that every book has to be a morality tale but if you slop this shit into a book you could at least be skilled and talented about it. Author is not. This is just irritating to read. Oh wow yet again a barely legal teen child is being bossed around by an older adult man. for fucks sake. Really.
By the way, what the fuck was the... love interest? Is that what we're doing here? Because it's pretty fucking gross.
"‘[spoiler name]!’ Romy shrieks. It’s ragged, raw, animalistic, but even with the raging woman inside it, it belongs to her daughter. Her sixteen-year-old daughter."
Romy is sixteen years old btw.
"Until, abruptly, he pulls away. ‘How old are you?’ His voice is low, his breathing less than steady.
Kira blinks. So is hers. ‘What?’ The question swirls. ‘How old—does it matter?’
Callum shuts his eyes, puts a hand on her arm, removes it, puts it back. ‘I just realised I have no idea.’ Heavily, he exhales. ‘You could be fifteen and look older. I don’t want to be a creep.’
The penny spins, slows, and drops. ‘Out of all the things we could be worrying about, that’s the one you choose?’ A smile touches her lips, almost coy. ‘How very noble.’ She hesitates. Normally, it would amuse her to freak him out a bit. Normally…but not now. ‘I’m eighteen.’ She cocks her head. ‘You’ve redeemed your past ungentlemanly actions. That really was quite noble.’
Callum huffs a low laugh. ‘Thank you. Good.’ He nods, and again. ‘Thank God.’"
He asked her this AFTERWARDS, by the way. So we got a gross creeper all around. I really hope this isn't a love interest thing with MC and callum. One the age gap and two all she does is physically abuse him. Which good for her, frankly, but that's not what healthy flirting / romance looks like.
▪ He tenses. The urge to tease is so very strong, but Kira simply smiles. ‘Am I the creep? Are you fifteen?’
He blinks, blinks, and slowly lifts his well-practiced eyebrows. ‘I sincerely hope not. I’ll have you know, I’ll be twenty-one in—’
Oh OK hes like four years older. Almost. Note the phrasing, he's not twenty one yet. Still creepy as fuck. He's finishing college and shes just starting. The disparity in maturity is astounding and it < spoiler> makes him holding her down until she obeys even worse. </ spoiler> This book has fallen from mediocre to stupidly offensive.
Horror in this book?
Uh? No not really. No, mm mm. Again, things start happening at chapter 30, so we've been exhausted waiting for something to happen. And when it does, it's really a let down.
The 'horror' of the forest is unremarkable. Getting lost in a forest is easy. Getting lost in the middle of winter where landmarks are often covered in snow? Real super fucking easy. Especially if you're a stupid tourist like MC who insist on wandering into the forest without protective gear or food or GPS trackers or whatever. I'm no forest ranger. I do have a tiny bit of common sense in that wearing a sweater will not protect you from switzerland winter temperatures. My point is that there's nothing particular or special about the 'whiteland' portion of the forest. There's nothing that marks it as different from getting lost in a regular forest during winter time. There is no horror, either of an otherworld or being lost in a extreme environment.
Annalise. She's a minor character that gets hinted at a lot as a big bad person. But what bad she's done is never really mentioned. Yes she's a huldra but, by default, huldra commit murder, rape, stalking, and other abuses as they are supernatural monsters. There's nothing especial about this Annalise that sets her apart, but the book acts like she should. 'Oh she's worse than the rest of them!' HOW? EXPLAIN BOOK, EXPLAIN!!
Plot twist / explanation of the 'horror' / monsters / forest.
tldr. In chapter 28 we finally get the plot twist. MC and her sister are half monster girls. Their mom is a monster from the forest named 'Annaliese'. The Whiteland is their native home. This is how we get the plot twist and I hate it.
OK so Kira, the female MC, goes into the forest again. Male Love Interest [MLI] goes with her because he has nothing better to do. No really, he broke his hand because yesterday they ALSO went into the forest/Whiteland and he was injured there. That's also when we get a hilarious plot twist where a hysterical female woman--who's crazy and hysterical BTW--shrieks at the MC for being half Huldra. Which is basically a Scandinavian version of a Greek Siren, but as a forest nymph. That's what the issue is with the mentally ill sister. She's not actually possessed, I think? She's just part monster. Except more monster than her sister, the MC?
So DEMONGIRL is the younger sister at age 16. Kira, the MC, is the older one at 18. How the fuck does the younger sister end up being 'more monster'? Is it genetic? Was the mother's ovaries less evil the first pregnancy?? Was the human sperm able to overpower the evil huldra-ness of the eggs???
OK but I digress. The MC goes into the Whiteland with the MLI yet again. This time she stocks up, takes a backpack full of food, water, some matches, weapons, winter specific clothes, etc.
SIKE! NO SHE DOESNT.
She, fully aware there is some fucked up shit going on, walks into the forest with just the clothes on her back. She just wanders in, stupidly. My god. If you had any good will left for her, I'll admire you if it doesn't evaporate completely at this point.
She's immediately caught by the um. Not huldra. Some other sapient monsters living in whiteland. Idk it's not very clear and I guess you should already know about scandanavian folk lore before reading this book. Or don't. I don't have much foreknowledge and don't think it made much of an impact. It didn't make it scarier or more tense, anyways. Anyways, she's caught, has a bad trip / hallucination despite being given no drugs, and is released because... Loud question marks. No really the bad guys had her imprisoned, they could do whatever they wanted to her sister AND mother. Why did they let her go? There's not even a fairy tale esque 'oh I did a task therefore our business is concluded, free me now'. Or like a known distraction, like throwing loose grains in front of a vampire to escape. There's literally no reason to let the MC go. There goes all the tension as well!
I think this plot twist should've been telegraphed earlier or clearer. I really thought that the plot twist was the horror part--the MC sister's unreality, self medicating with alcohol, mood swings, self harm and violence towards others, etc--was just a metaphor for mental illness. A really shitty one because hey psychosis doesn't make you hurt others. You're more likely to hurt yourself if you have psychosis. Or any other mental illness for that matter.
Chapter forty three is the mother < spoiler> explaining her side of things. This is the only time she gets to talk. </ spoiler>
Ooh oh god OK. I'm running out of anger steam writing this. Let's get to the conclusion.
The conclusion is empty of resolutions. It doesn't even feel like a cliffhanger begging attempt for a future sequel. I am left feeling disappointed and angry. this author is going on my 'never fucking read these jackasses' shitlist simply for wasting my time.
For some reason a bunch of wolves appear and drag the two sisters out of the white land place. Once again, even at the climax of her own story, the female MC does not save herself or her sister or anyone. She is useless in perpetua, amen.
WHY WERE THERE WOLVES. Am I supposed to have some fairy tale foreknowledge going into this? And I even looked! No wolves until that point. There was a single husky back in chapter 2, but husky dogs are not wolves. Yes wolves were also mentioned when they were pseudo breaking the fourth wall in Ch. 37 and talking about fairy tales. But real wolves? No. Nope. Absolutely not. And that's the ending.
The epilogue comes out of no where. Oh who the fuck is this random bitch 'Freya' who has barely been mentioned exactly 4 times in this entire book. Yes I checked. Four times exactly. Oh this is who.
“They may worry about Freya, but she’s fear; she’s not a nightmare. Anneliese took fifteen men instead of ten. Anneliese was the terror in the dark.”
I have a bad habit of starting and finishing books without checking the genre. Often times I find myself getting rather frustrated and fed up at the poor quality writing and terrible plots. Then, when I go to leave a review, I found out they are YA genre. Which explains the crappy prose and lousy character development and horrible plot.
Not this one though. This.. Hm. Sometimes the writing is great and other times it's choppy. Short sentences. Trying to. Emphasize panic? Or add artistic. Tension. Question mark?
I feel like romy was a real bad name to use by no fault if the author. I keep reading romney, as in that politician. I had to use a name replacement to keep it together. That's why all the quotes say DEMONGIRL instead of romy. All of the characters were bland and ordinary, so I have to change the names to keep track of who the fuck was who. Calum was MLI [male love interest], Kira was MC, Matthew was DAD.
The pacing is pleasantly consistent. It's just unfortunate that the plot takes far too long to go anywhere, resulting in a plodding circus walking home in the rain. The tension is lost, the horror benignly familiar and eternally distant. The book is extremely thrilled about chapter cliff hangers and at some point aka chapter 15 its become really tedious. It isn't until chapter 30 that anything happens. Yes that's right, 30, out of a 41 page novel. There are about 15-20 chapters that haphazardly moves characters from place to place, erodes any goodwill or hope for their survival, doesn't really give much backstory on why we should care about them, etc etc.
Some chapters are barely two pages long. One chapter only serves to remind us that there's other characters. I guess that's nice. its a break between endlessly flipping back and forth between the two main mcs. I personally find it irritating because I'm counting how many Chapters I have left and woops, one isn't really a chapter, its just a pov blip. love to be mislead, sarcastic heart emoji. Also, by the way, the other characters have no impact on the story. Not really. Like one time the two MCs were saved by two random characters and that's about it. Honestly the other characters were probably meant to flesh out the bad guys / haunted forest lore but they don't do much of that either. So they just... exist. They're flavor text. Like when you go up to a trash can in a video game and interact and the text box pops up to say 'hey it's a cute green trash can!'. That's it.
No really, all the MC does is get shuttles from place to place by outside forces. Not even ghostly malevolent ones. Oh I'm going to confront my parents about knowing something regarding their mentally ill daughter? Nah I'm going over to male love interest's place to get drunk and sleep. She's about 18 BTW, why is she getting drunk? I guess it's the only place she can in switzerland. [I assume she's american].
An example of the MC going places and doing nothing is this. MC has reasonable doubt and thinks Person knows something. MC confronts Person but they deny it and are mildly interrupted. MC immediately gives up and storms off, learning nothing and failing to move the plot forward. MC finds Male Love Interest, gets drunk, and passes out. This is the entire chapter. You'll notice the theme of the MC passing out continues through the book. It's almost as if the author doesn't know what to do next so they make the character black out and have someone else move the plot around the MC to continue on.
I really do hate how men rescue her constantly. Like not to be a feminist except I am and I'd like to know why a man has to rescue her. We have two reasons for her to
Callum lets her go, and she topples. Before she can struggle back up, he pushes her down, pins her arms, and traps her legs between his own. Aggravation blasts through her. Yet again, she’s wedged fast.
‘Why do people do this?’ She growls. Apart from her feet, head, and hands, none of her limbs will budge. ‘In the Kyo, they used magic. The dream you used force. He held me to a wall until I listened.’ Glowering, she tugs on her wrists. ‘The real you has done that, too, if you recall. Hey.’ She ramps up her wrenching as Callum starts to smirk. ‘It’s not funny. I was saving your life.’
‘No, you weren’t. You were being a martyr.’ Although his trap doesn’t loosen, his anger melts away. ‘And it really is quite funny.’ He bows his head, puffing out a laugh. ‘Amazing. That’s what it is. You’re so impossible that live people, dead people, and dream characters come to the same conclusion: if you need to listen, you have to be restrained. I’m sorry, but that’s funny. Oi.’
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT. WE'VE GONE FROM NEUTRALLY UNFEMINIST TO THIS. THE WOMAN
By the way, what the fuck was the... love interest? Is that what we're doing here? Because it's pretty fucking gross.
Romy is sixteen years old btw.
Kira blinks. So is hers. ‘What?’ The question swirls. ‘How old—does it matter?’
Callum shuts his eyes, puts a hand on her arm, removes it, puts it back. ‘I just realised I have no idea.’ Heavily, he exhales. ‘You could be fifteen and look older. I don’t want to be a creep.’
The penny spins, slows, and drops. ‘Out of all the things we could be worrying about, that’s the one you choose?’ A smile touches her lips, almost coy. ‘How very noble.’ She hesitates. Normally, it would amuse her to freak him out a bit. Normally…but not now. ‘I’m eighteen.’ She cocks her head. ‘You’ve redeemed your past ungentlemanly actions. That really was quite noble.’
Callum huffs a low laugh. ‘Thank you. Good.’ He nods, and again. ‘Thank God.’"
He asked her this AFTERWARDS, by the way. So we got a gross creeper all around. I really hope this isn't a love interest thing with MC and callum. One the age gap and two all she does is physically abuse him. Which good for her, frankly, but that's not what healthy flirting / romance looks like.
He blinks, blinks, and slowly lifts his well-practiced eyebrows. ‘I sincerely hope not. I’ll have you know, I’ll be twenty-one in—’
Oh OK hes like four years older. Almost. Note the phrasing, he's not twenty one yet. Still creepy as fuck. He's finishing college and shes just starting. The disparity in maturity is astounding and it < spoiler> makes him holding her down until she obeys even worse. </ spoiler> This book has fallen from mediocre to stupidly offensive.
Horror in this book?
Uh? No not really. No, mm mm. Again, things start happening at chapter 30, so we've been exhausted waiting for something to happen. And when it does, it's really a let down.
The 'horror' of the forest is unremarkable. Getting lost in a forest is easy. Getting lost in the middle of winter where landmarks are often covered in snow? Real super fucking easy. Especially if you're a stupid tourist like MC who insist on wandering into the forest without protective gear or food or GPS trackers or whatever. I'm no forest ranger. I do have a tiny bit of common sense in that wearing a sweater will not protect you from switzerland winter temperatures. My point is that there's nothing particular or special about the 'whiteland' portion of the forest. There's nothing that marks it as different from getting lost in a regular forest during winter time. There is no horror, either of an otherworld or being lost in a extreme environment.
Annalise. She's a minor character that gets hinted at a lot as a big bad person. But what bad she's done is never really mentioned. Yes she's
Plot twist / explanation of the 'horror' / monsters / forest.
tldr. In chapter 28 we finally get the plot twist. MC and her sister are half monster girls. Their mom is a monster from the forest named 'Annaliese'. The Whiteland is their native home. This is how we get the plot twist and I hate it.
OK so Kira, the female MC, goes into the forest again. Male Love Interest [MLI] goes with her because he has nothing better to do. No really, he broke his hand because yesterday they ALSO went into the forest/Whiteland and he was injured there. That's also when we get a hilarious plot twist where a hysterical female woman--who's crazy and hysterical BTW--shrieks at the MC for being half Huldra. Which is basically a Scandinavian version of a Greek Siren, but as a forest nymph. That's what the issue is with the mentally ill sister. She's not actually possessed, I think? She's just part monster. Except more monster than her sister, the MC?
So DEMONGIRL is the younger sister at age 16. Kira, the MC, is the older one at 18. How the fuck does the younger sister end up being 'more monster'? Is it genetic? Was the mother's ovaries less evil the first pregnancy?? Was the human sperm able to overpower the evil huldra-ness of the eggs???
OK but I digress. The MC goes into the Whiteland with the MLI yet again. This time she stocks up, takes a backpack full of food, water, some matches, weapons, winter specific clothes, etc.
SIKE! NO SHE DOESNT.
She, fully aware there is some fucked up shit going on, walks into the forest with just the clothes on her back. She just wanders in, stupidly. My god. If you had any good will left for her, I'll admire you if it doesn't evaporate completely at this point.
She's immediately caught by the um. Not huldra. Some other sapient monsters living in whiteland. Idk it's not very clear and I guess you should already know about scandanavian folk lore before reading this book. Or don't. I don't have much foreknowledge and don't think it made much of an impact. It didn't make it scarier or more tense, anyways. Anyways, she's caught, has a bad trip / hallucination despite being given no drugs, and is released because... Loud question marks. No really the bad guys had her imprisoned, they could do whatever they wanted to her sister AND mother. Why did they let her go? There's not even a fairy tale esque 'oh I did a task therefore our business is concluded, free me now'. Or like a known distraction, like throwing loose grains in front of a vampire to escape. There's literally no reason to let the MC go. There goes all the tension as well!
I think this plot twist should've been telegraphed earlier or clearer. I really thought that the plot twist was the horror part--the MC sister's unreality, self medicating with alcohol, mood swings, self harm and violence towards others, etc--was just a metaphor for mental illness. A really shitty one because hey psychosis doesn't make you hurt others. You're more likely to hurt yourself if you have psychosis. Or any other mental illness for that matter.
Chapter forty three is the mother < spoiler> explaining her side of things. This is the only time she gets to talk. </ spoiler>
Ooh oh god OK. I'm running out of anger steam writing this. Let's get to the conclusion.
The conclusion is empty of resolutions. It doesn't even feel like a cliffhanger begging attempt for a future sequel. I am left feeling disappointed and angry. this author is going on my 'never fucking read these jackasses' shitlist simply for wasting my time.
For some reason a bunch of
WHY WERE THERE
The epilogue comes out of no where. Oh who the fuck is
“They may worry about Freya, but she’s fear; she’s not a nightmare. Anneliese took fifteen men instead of ten. Anneliese was the terror in the dark.”
Bitch you can't make and maintain tension, nothing about a scary forest is scary, and you can't write competent Main Characters. Are you really trying to make some absolutely obscure random [thing] the next big bad? You didn't even have a big bad in THIS book! Seriously. If you read this, tell me who the bad guy was. The
Miscellenia!
In chapter thirty seven they get self aware and
"Not, however, acknowledged. Kira decides against declaring it. On under-nourishing sleep, under-nourishing food, and new hormonal boob pains, she could see anything as a good point, or equally, a bad one. ‘I guess I’ll play both roles.’ Kira resists the urge to poke her boob to see if it still is tender. ‘You know, good guys still win. On the whole, they don’t learn anything. You’re meant to find their inherent goodness, cheer their victory, and go home.’ "
the mc has
This is the second? time she has passed out and needed to be rescued by a man. It's not the first time shes passed out and been useless, so theres that.
Weird xenophobia about his nationality here. Thanks [not!]
deep sighs. Love ironic sexism. Great.
Side note are they rich? That does make a huge difference if I'm rooting for them or not. They're white which is a strike against them already, and since they're able to afford a indeterminately long vacation to SWITZERLAND OF ALL PLACES? Fuck them. I hope they all die horribly. Anyways, what was I saying?
In conclusion. Book = bad. Don't read this. Terrible.
Content Warnings
minor vomit, rape, misogyny, murder, blood, violence,
medium kidnapping,
major medical content, mental illness, alcoholism, underage drinking, alcohol use, parental death, murder, gore, kidnapping, confinement, self harm,
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Confinement, Death of parent, Gore, Kidnapping, Medical content, Mental illness, Murder, and Self harm
Moderate: Kidnapping
Minor: Blood, Misogyny, Murder, Rape, Violence, and Vomit
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