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A review by meripm
The Absinthe Underground by Jamie Pacton
2.0
Thank you to Peachtree and NetGalley for the ARC!
The Absinthe Underground had the perfect mix of things to attract me: it’s set in the Belle Époque, it features art nouveau for the cover and inside the story, and tells the story of a sapphic young couple in what promises to be an intense and fantastical setting.
Unfortunately, all these things that could have made for an absolutely amazing novel are held back by a narration that has several flaws, the main one of them being that it tells a lot and shows very little.
Sybil and Esme are two characters that the author tries very hard to differentiate. Sybil is meant to be an adventurous and carefree artist, while Esme is more careful, shier, calmer. The contraposition of their characteristics should have made for interesting dialogues and romance, but they had very little chemistry beyond the author telling us over and over how much they were into each other and lusted after one another in their respective trains of thought. They were also terribly naïve in several occasions for people who are barely scraping by and supplementing their income with thievery. Where are those street smarts?!
The worldbuilding and plot felt quite bare-bones for how many promising things there were in the premise. The author set the story in an interesting city with so much to draw from, but it was barely exploited and the predictable plot did not make up for it in twists and mystery. The narration felt clunky at times and the dialogues needed some more polishing. Furthermore, despite the author’s clear attempt at differentiating the main characters, their narrative voices felt so similar it is actually very hard to tell whose chapter it is.
I also could not get past the fact that it makes absinthe look desirable and ‘aesthetic’ when the age of the characters and the simplistic style make it seem clearly aimed at an underage audience.
I really regret needing to write this review because I was ready to absolutely love the book, but it was a letdown. I genuinely think it could have been SO much better if the author had spent some more months polishing it, because there were some really cool ideas in there.
The Absinthe Underground had the perfect mix of things to attract me: it’s set in the Belle Époque, it features art nouveau for the cover and inside the story, and tells the story of a sapphic young couple in what promises to be an intense and fantastical setting.
Unfortunately, all these things that could have made for an absolutely amazing novel are held back by a narration that has several flaws, the main one of them being that it tells a lot and shows very little.
Sybil and Esme are two characters that the author tries very hard to differentiate. Sybil is meant to be an adventurous and carefree artist, while Esme is more careful, shier, calmer. The contraposition of their characteristics should have made for interesting dialogues and romance, but they had very little chemistry beyond the author telling us over and over how much they were into each other and lusted after one another in their respective trains of thought. They were also terribly naïve in several occasions for people who are barely scraping by and supplementing their income with thievery. Where are those street smarts?!
The worldbuilding and plot felt quite bare-bones for how many promising things there were in the premise. The author set the story in an interesting city with so much to draw from, but it was barely exploited and the predictable plot did not make up for it in twists and mystery. The narration felt clunky at times and the dialogues needed some more polishing. Furthermore, despite the author’s clear attempt at differentiating the main characters, their narrative voices felt so similar it is actually very hard to tell whose chapter it is.
I also could not get past the fact that it makes absinthe look desirable and ‘aesthetic’ when the age of the characters and the simplistic style make it seem clearly aimed at an underage audience.
I really regret needing to write this review because I was ready to absolutely love the book, but it was a letdown. I genuinely think it could have been SO much better if the author had spent some more months polishing it, because there were some really cool ideas in there.