A review by _wastelandbaby
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows

emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

I didn't expect this book to be so good.

Firstly I love a good slow burn, add to it arranged marriage and political intrigue, and it's basically a book of my dreams. But I read some reviews complaining that the description omitted the trauma that the main character deals with through a whole book and that the SA at the beginning was quite sudden and not pleasant to read, do I've become quite wary. 
Thankfully, I still decided to read this book and I actually didn't mind them, maybe it was because I knew what to actually expect. So maybe refrain from reading if these themes are not for you.

Anyway, back to the book, starting with the positives. 
What I really loved was how the author refrained from using one of the easiest slow burn tricks - miscommunication. Quite the contrary, our main characters Vel and Cae are honest to each other from (almost) the beginning, which helps build an amazing relationship between them. That relationship is my favourite part of the book. 
And yes there's quite a lot of thinking about the past traumas, but it's not overshadowing the rest of the story 
As for the political plot, the intrigue is quite good. I must admit I didn't expect that ending, but I don't really focus much on the clues, preferring everything to unravel on its own.
Another really nicely written part of the book is the world building. Clearly the author spent a lot of time creating both of the cultures that we explore and the magic system, I would love to see more books happening in the same universe. 

As for the negatives, I don't have a lot of them, but I was quite annoyed with the POVs. In Vel's chapters we had first-person pov, but in Cae's the pov was third person. I'm not sure why it's like this, every time the pov switched I needed a chapter to get used to it.
The other thing is the length of the book, for me it was too long. Some things were too detailed, we actually had whole days described from the beginning to the end. I was quite surprised to realize that everything happened in a span of the week or two? (Actually, is it still slow burn, then? 😂) 
Other than these two things, I had a great time reading this and hopefully will read the second book in the series soon.