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s_kasko 's review for:
The Girl from Everywhere
by Heidi Heilig
I feel like I spent the entirety of The Girl from Everywhere waiting for something to happen. Or maybe waiting for the plot to happen?
The cover copy of The Girl from Everywhere promises certain things: time-travel shenanigans, adventure in a variety of places, a sweeping romance, and high stakes (quite literally, Nix's existence). But The Girl from Everywhere doesn't really deliver.
In part, it's because Nix and the Temptation spend like 80% of the book in one time and place: Hawaii, 1884. There's very little time-travel - a couple short scenes in New York and some ancient market in the beginning, and then a chapter or so in a legendary Chinese tomb - and very little adventure. Instead, there's a lot of thinking/worrying about things - including what is supposedly the book's primary threat: Nix's dad getting a map that might erase Nix from existence.
Another piece of it is that the initial hook - Nix's father is looking for a map that could lead to Nix being erased from existence - never really materializes into a driving force in the book. Nix talks about it a whole f***ing lot - but she never really does anything to try and prevent her father from getting this map.
There were definitely other things I disliked about The Girl from Everywhere. The magic system was poorly explained, constantly adding new facets that forced me to reevaluate my understanding of it rather than deepened it. The characters were...colorful, but somewhat two-dimensional. The romance - the love triangle, rather - is extremely flat and one dimensional; it feels more like an obligatory check in the romance box than anything that actually fit the story. But it was the fizzling of all the things that hooked me about the book's premise that I couldn't ever get past, and it was that that made The Girl from Everywhere so unsatisfying for me.
(It's funny, because if you strip away the time-travel aspect, The Girl from Everywhere is/could be a pretty good piece of historical fiction. It's quiet and introspective, but it's a really interesting look at Hawaii and particularly the last days of the Kingdom of Hawaii.)
Overall
There were definitely parts - scenes, moments, short strings of chapters - of The Girl from Everywhere that I really enjoyed. Heilig's prose is decent - maybe a bit purple/flowery at times - and she's clearly done her research on Hawaii and on the various other legends The Girl from Everywhere touches on.
For me, though, The Girl from Everywhere couldn't string enough of the good bits together to make a good book. If you're looking for a quiet historical fantasy that's lightly brushed with magic, The Girl from Everywhere might be a good choice. But if you're looking for the exciting time-travel adventure the cover copy promises - The Girl from Everywhere probably isn't it.
3.25/5
The cover copy of The Girl from Everywhere promises certain things: time-travel shenanigans, adventure in a variety of places, a sweeping romance, and high stakes (quite literally, Nix's existence). But The Girl from Everywhere doesn't really deliver.
In part, it's because Nix and the Temptation spend like 80% of the book in one time and place: Hawaii, 1884. There's very little time-travel - a couple short scenes in New York and some ancient market in the beginning, and then a chapter or so in a legendary Chinese tomb - and very little adventure. Instead, there's a lot of thinking/worrying about things - including what is supposedly the book's primary threat: Nix's dad getting a map that might erase Nix from existence.
Another piece of it is that the initial hook - Nix's father is looking for a map that could lead to Nix being erased from existence - never really materializes into a driving force in the book. Nix talks about it a whole f***ing lot - but she never really does anything to try and prevent her father from getting this map.
There were definitely other things I disliked about The Girl from Everywhere. The magic system was poorly explained, constantly adding new facets that forced me to reevaluate my understanding of it rather than deepened it. The characters were...colorful, but somewhat two-dimensional. The romance - the love triangle, rather - is extremely flat and one dimensional; it feels more like an obligatory check in the romance box than anything that actually fit the story. But it was the fizzling of all the things that hooked me about the book's premise that I couldn't ever get past, and it was that that made The Girl from Everywhere so unsatisfying for me.
(It's funny, because if you strip away the time-travel aspect, The Girl from Everywhere is/could be a pretty good piece of historical fiction. It's quiet and introspective, but it's a really interesting look at Hawaii and particularly the last days of the Kingdom of Hawaii.)
Overall
There were definitely parts - scenes, moments, short strings of chapters - of The Girl from Everywhere that I really enjoyed. Heilig's prose is decent - maybe a bit purple/flowery at times - and she's clearly done her research on Hawaii and on the various other legends The Girl from Everywhere touches on.
For me, though, The Girl from Everywhere couldn't string enough of the good bits together to make a good book. If you're looking for a quiet historical fantasy that's lightly brushed with magic, The Girl from Everywhere might be a good choice. But if you're looking for the exciting time-travel adventure the cover copy promises - The Girl from Everywhere probably isn't it.
3.25/5