Review by irissel - Secrets and Stardust

irissel 's review for:

Secrets and Stardust by Jeannin Counts

3.25

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I ended up really enjoying this story. The world-building and plot were unique and a lot of the side characters were pretty endearing. My favorite of the POV characters was Zane, and I found his character arc and unfolding romance much more interesting and engaging than any of the more primary characters. He is also, I feel, the character that had the most development throughout the story. Iyanna, our main character, didn't seem to grow much, but I still enjoyed her even if I found her annoying and naive (much too trusting) sometimes. Emmeric fell somewhere between those two for me in terms of likeability. I saw some hints of growth from him, and if he ends up being Iyanna's primary love interest (I hope he does. I did not like Altair), he would be a bit of breath of fresh air in all the romantasy alpha male heroes that all feel kind of the same to me.

My main issue with the story, and why I didn't rate it higher, is because of the writing style. The author has a lot of promise, but I feel like she might lack confidence in her ability to get things across to readers, and that led to a lot of hand-holdy quirks in her prose I found somewhat annoying. There were also a lot of popular romantasy micro-tropes that felt like they were more shoe-horned in instead of arising naturally, perhaps for marketing purposes.

Content Warnings