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A review by deadgoodbookreviews
Willow Born by Shanna Miles
3.0
Review originally published here: https://chaininteraction.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/review-willow-born-shanna-miles/?iframe=true&theme_preview=true
I came this close to giving up on this one. I have yet to add anything to any kind of 'did not finish' pile and I'm too proud to give up now, so I persevered. Here's what I discovered:
Willow Born very much has the feel of a debut novel. It also has the feel of a novel that would have benefited from a lot of editing or perhaps just putting it aside and coming back to it in a year or so and then cutting bits and adding bits in. Does that make any sense? What I mean is that Willow Born has some really great ideas and most of the actual writing is pretty decent but there are so many loose ends or just unnecessary threads that I spent the first 60% of the book utterly confused. In the last 40% I just decided that the things I had thought were important and plot relevant and about to be explained probably weren't any of those things and I should just read the book like none of the plot mattered.
In terms of subject/story...this kind of reads like an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossed with old school Dr Who crossed with some kind of teen high school drama. There's paranormal activity, there's time travel (of sorts) and there's romance for the sake of romance. None of this is overtly a 'bad' thing it just doesn't make for particularly compelling reading.
If you think you might give this book a go you won't have a terrible time of it, the last 40% of the book actually got quite interesting and exciting. But you have to be willing to commit to the confusion of the earliest phase of the book first.
By the way: I received a digital copy of this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I came this close to giving up on this one. I have yet to add anything to any kind of 'did not finish' pile and I'm too proud to give up now, so I persevered. Here's what I discovered:
Willow Born very much has the feel of a debut novel. It also has the feel of a novel that would have benefited from a lot of editing or perhaps just putting it aside and coming back to it in a year or so and then cutting bits and adding bits in. Does that make any sense? What I mean is that Willow Born has some really great ideas and most of the actual writing is pretty decent but there are so many loose ends or just unnecessary threads that I spent the first 60% of the book utterly confused. In the last 40% I just decided that the things I had thought were important and plot relevant and about to be explained probably weren't any of those things and I should just read the book like none of the plot mattered.
In terms of subject/story...this kind of reads like an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossed with old school Dr Who crossed with some kind of teen high school drama. There's paranormal activity, there's time travel (of sorts) and there's romance for the sake of romance. None of this is overtly a 'bad' thing it just doesn't make for particularly compelling reading.
If you think you might give this book a go you won't have a terrible time of it, the last 40% of the book actually got quite interesting and exciting. But you have to be willing to commit to the confusion of the earliest phase of the book first.
By the way: I received a digital copy of this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.