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darkandbookish 's review for:
Avalon High
by Meg Cabot
Maybe if I was nine I would have enjoyed this a lot more. Unfortunately, I am not nine, and this book was highly disappointing.
I have never read anything by Meg Cabot before, but I knew she wrote The Princess Diaries and a few other popular books, so I wasn't worried. I grabbed this book because years ago I saw the Disney channel original movie of the same name, and also because I find anything about King Arthur and the knights of the round table super interesting.
This book, however, gave me nothing I wanted. I read it in a few hours, and when I was done it felt like absolutely nothing had occurred in the novel. The main girl, Ellie, still didn't really believe the Order of the Bear was correct in their predictions at the end of the book. So what was the point?
I was wrong to assume that the book would maintain a lot of fantasy, instead it was almost entirely contemporary. It was also ridiculously predictable. This is a very rare occurrence where I believe the film, although a DCOM, was so much better! The movie was unpredictable and had major plot twists! Will was NOT King Arthur, badass female Ellie/Allie was! And Merlin was in the story, as well as a totally unexpected Mordred! So going into the book, I expected this plot line to occur. Not the predictably boring and cliched story I got.
I also thought the romance was unnecessary and under developed. And I HATE when high schoolers "fall in love" after a single conversation with the person. Much of the book also felt like the author was trying to meet a certain word count. After almost every sentence there would be a reminder of which character the narrator was talking about, it was not needed and annoying after a while.
Overall I am simply sad that this wasn't the fun book I had been expecting. It almost felt like I was reading some poorly written fan fiction.
I have never read anything by Meg Cabot before, but I knew she wrote The Princess Diaries and a few other popular books, so I wasn't worried. I grabbed this book because years ago I saw the Disney channel original movie of the same name, and also because I find anything about King Arthur and the knights of the round table super interesting.
This book, however, gave me nothing I wanted. I read it in a few hours, and when I was done it felt like absolutely nothing had occurred in the novel. The main girl, Ellie, still didn't really believe the Order of the Bear was correct in their predictions at the end of the book. So what was the point?
I was wrong to assume that the book would maintain a lot of fantasy, instead it was almost entirely contemporary. It was also ridiculously predictable. This is a very rare occurrence where I believe the film, although a DCOM, was so much better! The movie was unpredictable and had major plot twists! Will was NOT King Arthur, badass female Ellie/Allie was! And Merlin was in the story, as well as a totally unexpected Mordred! So going into the book, I expected this plot line to occur. Not the predictably boring and cliched story I got.
I also thought the romance was unnecessary and under developed. And I HATE when high schoolers "fall in love" after a single conversation with the person. Much of the book also felt like the author was trying to meet a certain word count. After almost every sentence there would be a reminder of which character the narrator was talking about, it was not needed and annoying after a while.
Overall I am simply sad that this wasn't the fun book I had been expecting. It almost felt like I was reading some poorly written fan fiction.