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A review by anatomicalpuppet
Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson
1.25
This was... woof. I'm glad it was as short as it was, because I probably would've DNF'd it within the first quarter otherwise.
I truly could not stand the writing style. I'm sorry, I don't care if your protagonist is a supposedly genius literature professor, there is absolutely no reason to use the word "apotheosis" twice within the first 50 pages. It felt like the author bought a word-a-day calendar and decided that was enough to warrant constantly harping about Ro having a "way with words." The prose and dialogue read nearly identically, and it's all bad. Nobody talks like this. If she brought up Shakespeare one more time I was gonna put my head through the wall.
The plot was interesting enough to keep me engaged, but it was unbelievably predictable. That wasn't a problem so much on its own, since I was still curious to see how the twist I knew was coming would play out, but it just... wasn't satisfying at all when it did. Ash's heel turn was the most boring possible route this could've taken; her motive was dumb and her villain monologue was contrived. And don't even get me started on Ro. If a girl bludgeons a raccoon to death with a shovel in front of you and you don't clock that as weird because she's a woman and obviously only stupid insensitive men can have red flags, I'm sorry, you're dumb as hell! Get out of there! What are you doing!
I think this concept could've worked a lot better as a short story, honestly. And if it was written completely differently. And if I didn't have to read the word cottagecore multiple times in a published novel.
I truly could not stand the writing style. I'm sorry, I don't care if your protagonist is a supposedly genius literature professor, there is absolutely no reason to use the word "apotheosis" twice within the first 50 pages. It felt like the author bought a word-a-day calendar and decided that was enough to warrant constantly harping about Ro having a "way with words." The prose and dialogue read nearly identically, and it's all bad. Nobody talks like this. If she brought up Shakespeare one more time I was gonna put my head through the wall.
The plot was interesting enough to keep me engaged, but it was unbelievably predictable. That wasn't a problem so much on its own, since I was still curious to see how the twist I knew was coming would play out, but it just... wasn't satisfying at all when it did. Ash's heel turn was the most boring possible route this could've taken; her motive was dumb and her villain monologue was contrived. And don't even get me started on Ro. If a girl bludgeons a raccoon to death with a shovel in front of you and you don't clock that as weird because she's a woman and obviously only stupid insensitive men can have red flags, I'm sorry, you're dumb as hell! Get out of there! What are you doing!
I think this concept could've worked a lot better as a short story, honestly. And if it was written completely differently. And if I didn't have to read the word cottagecore multiple times in a published novel.