maro96leon 's review for:

For Whom The Belle Tolls by Jaysea Lynn

4.0

adventurous emotional funny inspiring slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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Going into this book after watching the series, I had high expectations for the world-building and the stories. That probably lessened my experience. Don’t get me wrong — I liked this book. But I was expecting to love it, to want to devour it. Instead, I got a nice story with too many pages that, at times, I didn’t feel eager to pick back up.

There’s a lot to enjoy here. I loved learning how Lily and Bel met and why they’re so beloved in the afterlife. The story of Sharkie and her mother-daughter relationship was compelling, and I appreciated getting deeper into Bel’s trauma through the war storyline. The stories within the book are genuinely interesting, and I’m glad I got to read them.

What didn’t work as well for me was the format. It wasn’t a continuous day-to-day narrative, but it often felt like one, which sometimes confused me and left me with the sense of gaps in the story. It was more like watching TikToks of “a day in my life” than following a flowing arc. On top of that, the book tried to cover a lot — the birth of the help desk, Lily’s afterlife, Lily and Bel’s relationship, Sharkie’s story, and the multiverse war. All of these are good ideas, but in trying to tackle everything, I felt the book only skimmed the surface. With fewer threads, the story might have gone deeper and been even more impactful.