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A review by el_mackattack
Havenfall by Sara Holland
4.0
Overall, I liked this book a lot and I am very interested to see where the second book goes with the plot! Personally, the concept and combination of mystery and real-world-fantasy (this was the way that I kind of thought about the combination of magical other realms and earth) was very interesting and unique!
THINGS I LOVED!
WORLD-BUILDING: I don't feel like I need to talk too much about this because the world-building is really unique, and it is what drew me to the book more than anything else! As I said, I'm not gonna talk about it too much because all you have to do is read the synopsis to know that this isn't your typical fantasy book.
TAYA: I LOVED TAYA! Taya's character and wanting to know what would happen to her, fueled a good portion of my motivation to finish the book. What I liked in particular about Taya was that even though she is kind of described as being a little bit closed off and mysterious in the synopsis I read, SHE ISN'T A JERK BECAUSE OF THAT! Too often have I seen other characters like Taya come off as jerks to the main character (or really just IN GENERAL) when they either "know more than they let on" or "have a dark past" and THANK GOODNESS, TAYA IS LIKEABLE! And to add on to the list of reasons I like Taya, she is LGBTQ, and even though I kind of saw the answer to her true origins coming from a ways away, that didn't really take away from my interest in her as a character.
LGBTQ REPRESENTATION: I'm never going to argue with someone including LGBTQ representation in a book like this because we don't see it often! But I think Sara Holland did an excellent job in particular with how she incorporated it. What I absolutely loved was that no one in the book was DEFINED by their sexual orientation. The author talks about it like it's nothing, and so through Maddie's perspective, the reader can see the emotions and relationships building up between characters without having to constantly be reminded of someone's sexual orientation through specific labels. I found that to be quite refreshing because instead, you're reading about characters who HAPPEN to be LGBTQ, not characters who are DEFINED by being LGBTQ. I also felt A LOT of chemistry between Taya and Maddie, so I'm not so subtly rooting for them to get together... BUT ANYWAYS!
THINGS I WAS NOT SUCH A FAN OF...
MADDIE: It's not that I didn't like her, in fact, I felt like half the time I could relate to her, but something just felt "off". Maddie is the main narrator, (also LGBTQ, which I really liked) but I didn't know exactly how to place her character. This is more just because I felt like she was very repetitious with how often she referenced her past, and I realize this is partly because she is heavily defined by that, but it got to the point where there were some sections where I was like, "Yeah I know this already...can we get back to the other stuff?"
THE DREADED PLOT SLUMPS: This book definitely does suffer a little bit from the "middle-book-syndrome" (I think that's what people call it...) and the plot does slow down for a little bit during a middle section of the book. BUT WHAT I WILL SAY IS THAT I HAVE DEFINITELY SEEN WORSE in terms of "middle-book-syndrome" and it's very easy for me to abandon books whose beginnings really interest me because of a slow middle plot, so all-in-all, the "middle-book-syndrome" wasn't a huge drawback for me.
PLOT TWISTS: They're not exactly as well-hidden as I'd hoped for. In fact, I was able to guess quite a few of these plot twists about half-way into the book. So...yeah they weren't as gut-punchy as I would've liked. However, what I will say is that they weren't executed exactly the way I thought they'd be, and there are some plot twists that I did NOT see coming, so there were still some surprises along the road. So it's not completely predictable, but you can guess some of the stuff that's gonna happen.
All in all, if you're looking for a different spin on fantasy, this is definitely a good book to pick up! I think an overall interest in the world-building and the characters definitely outweighed a lot of my problems with the book and I'm really sad that we don't know much about the sequel at the moment. But I'm really excited to see where the second book goes considering everything we're introduced to in Havenfall and I'm definitely gonna pick up a copy of the sequel as soon as it's released!
THINGS I LOVED!
WORLD-BUILDING: I don't feel like I need to talk too much about this because the world-building is really unique, and it is what drew me to the book more than anything else! As I said, I'm not gonna talk about it too much because all you have to do is read the synopsis to know that this isn't your typical fantasy book.
TAYA: I LOVED TAYA! Taya's character and wanting to know what would happen to her, fueled a good portion of my motivation to finish the book. What I liked in particular about Taya was that even though she is kind of described as being a little bit closed off and mysterious in the synopsis I read, SHE ISN'T A JERK BECAUSE OF THAT! Too often have I seen other characters like Taya come off as jerks to the main character (or really just IN GENERAL) when they either "know more than they let on" or "have a dark past" and THANK GOODNESS, TAYA IS LIKEABLE! And to add on to the list of reasons I like Taya, she is LGBTQ, and even though I kind of saw the answer to her true origins coming from a ways away, that didn't really take away from my interest in her as a character.
LGBTQ REPRESENTATION: I'm never going to argue with someone including LGBTQ representation in a book like this because we don't see it often! But I think Sara Holland did an excellent job in particular with how she incorporated it. What I absolutely loved was that no one in the book was DEFINED by their sexual orientation. The author talks about it like it's nothing, and so through Maddie's perspective, the reader can see the emotions and relationships building up between characters without having to constantly be reminded of someone's sexual orientation through specific labels. I found that to be quite refreshing because instead, you're reading about characters who HAPPEN to be LGBTQ, not characters who are DEFINED by being LGBTQ. I also felt A LOT of chemistry between Taya and Maddie, so I'm not so subtly rooting for them to get together... BUT ANYWAYS!
THINGS I WAS NOT SUCH A FAN OF...
MADDIE: It's not that I didn't like her, in fact, I felt like half the time I could relate to her, but something just felt "off". Maddie is the main narrator, (also LGBTQ, which I really liked) but I didn't know exactly how to place her character. This is more just because I felt like she was very repetitious with how often she referenced her past, and I realize this is partly because she is heavily defined by that, but it got to the point where there were some sections where I was like, "Yeah I know this already...can we get back to the other stuff?"
THE DREADED PLOT SLUMPS: This book definitely does suffer a little bit from the "middle-book-syndrome" (I think that's what people call it...) and the plot does slow down for a little bit during a middle section of the book. BUT WHAT I WILL SAY IS THAT I HAVE DEFINITELY SEEN WORSE in terms of "middle-book-syndrome" and it's very easy for me to abandon books whose beginnings really interest me because of a slow middle plot, so all-in-all, the "middle-book-syndrome" wasn't a huge drawback for me.
PLOT TWISTS: They're not exactly as well-hidden as I'd hoped for. In fact, I was able to guess quite a few of these plot twists about half-way into the book. So...yeah they weren't as gut-punchy as I would've liked. However, what I will say is that they weren't executed exactly the way I thought they'd be, and there are some plot twists that I did NOT see coming, so there were still some surprises along the road. So it's not completely predictable, but you can guess some of the stuff that's gonna happen.
All in all, if you're looking for a different spin on fantasy, this is definitely a good book to pick up! I think an overall interest in the world-building and the characters definitely outweighed a lot of my problems with the book and I'm really sad that we don't know much about the sequel at the moment. But I'm really excited to see where the second book goes considering everything we're introduced to in Havenfall and I'm definitely gonna pick up a copy of the sequel as soon as it's released!