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ailarum 's review for:
This Vicious Hunger
by Francesca May
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
2.5 / 5 stars
This book was unfortunately disappointing and ultimately quite frustrating, because it had promise, but ended up falling far short. The main positive about this book was the writing style, which I did enjoy reading. But that’s really the only positive I can think of, though it did have a large enough impact on my reading experience that I am rounding my 2.5 star score up (for goodreads and netgalley). While I wouldn’t say that the book truly succeeds in creating a gothic atmosphere, it does still manage to impart the eerie and lonely nature of Thora’s existence quite well.
Now to the not so good things. Really my biggest issue is the ending, which does not feel like an ending. I completely understand that whether or not you like open endings is up to personal preference, but I honestly can’t see anyone, even someone who loves open endings, being content with this. Because this ‘ending’ feels like it’s supposed to go right before the actual ending. Like the author ran out of time and decided «eh, good enough» and just handed in the manuscript sans-ending.
The characters were one of the more frustrating parts of the book, because they are actually interesting and layered, but then their story doesn’t really go anywhere. Look at the protagonist, Thora, for instance; she grew up somewhat isolated from the normal world, as a result of being an undertaker’s daughter and having lost her mother early in her life. Her father married her off to a seedy man because he was dying (something that he only told Thora about shortly before his death), since a woman couldn’t really survive alone in their society and the guy was the only man who would take Thora, unappealing as she is. A few weeks after their wedding, her abusive husband dies and her in laws just want to get rid of her, so they shuffle her off on some professor of botany at the local university who offered to take her under their wing - even though women are not usually allowed to get a university education. Thora quickly realises that there is something strange about her new mentor’s work, but she’s unwilling to say anything about it because this position is her last resort, and without it she would have nowhere left to go. Like, that is absolutely a great constellation of circumstances to make a fascinating character, but again the deeply unsatisfying ending just makes it all seem pointless.
The romance between Thora and Olea is also just very disappointing. The character of Olea also starts with an intriguing basis to her character, but more and more she just starts becoming annoying and repetitive. There is some chemistry between Olea and Thora in the first half of the book, only for it to completely disappear by the halfway mark, even though their romance is the axis which this whole story orbits around.
In general there are just a lot of weird author choices throughout the book. Like, why are all of the names Italian (Petaccia, Niccolo, Leonardo, Elianto), but then the protagonist’s name is Thora Grieve???? Why is this set in a fictional, albeit vaguely Italian-inspired, world, yet the characters reference figures from Greek mythology and smallpox? Who thought «speak in the plain fucking common tongue» sounded good? Why is this tagged as adult fiction but reads as YA all the way through, except for the sex scenes maybe. So yeah. Quite disappointed.
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Thank you to Orbit/Little, Brown UK for the ARC
This book was unfortunately disappointing and ultimately quite frustrating, because it had promise, but ended up falling far short. The main positive about this book was the writing style, which I did enjoy reading. But that’s really the only positive I can think of, though it did have a large enough impact on my reading experience that I am rounding my 2.5 star score up (for goodreads and netgalley). While I wouldn’t say that the book truly succeeds in creating a gothic atmosphere, it does still manage to impart the eerie and lonely nature of Thora’s existence quite well.
Now to the not so good things. Really my biggest issue is the ending, which does not feel like an ending. I completely understand that whether or not you like open endings is up to personal preference, but I honestly can’t see anyone, even someone who loves open endings, being content with this. Because this ‘ending’ feels like it’s supposed to go right before the actual ending. Like the author ran out of time and decided «eh, good enough» and just handed in the manuscript sans-ending.
The characters were one of the more frustrating parts of the book, because they are actually interesting and layered, but then their story doesn’t really go anywhere. Look at the protagonist, Thora, for instance; she grew up somewhat isolated from the normal world, as a result of being an undertaker’s daughter and having lost her mother early in her life. Her father married her off to a seedy man because he was dying (something that he only told Thora about shortly before his death), since a woman couldn’t really survive alone in their society and the guy was the only man who would take Thora, unappealing as she is. A few weeks after their wedding, her abusive husband dies and her in laws just want to get rid of her, so they shuffle her off on some professor of botany at the local university who offered to take her under their wing - even though women are not usually allowed to get a university education. Thora quickly realises that there is something strange about her new mentor’s work, but she’s unwilling to say anything about it because this position is her last resort, and without it she would have nowhere left to go. Like, that is absolutely a great constellation of circumstances to make a fascinating character, but again the deeply unsatisfying ending just makes it all seem pointless.
The romance between Thora and Olea is also just very disappointing. The character of Olea also starts with an intriguing basis to her character, but more and more she just starts becoming annoying and repetitive. There is some chemistry between Olea and Thora in the first half of the book, only for it to completely disappear by the halfway mark, even though their romance is the axis which this whole story orbits around.
In general there are just a lot of weird author choices throughout the book. Like, why are all of the names Italian (Petaccia, Niccolo, Leonardo, Elianto), but then the protagonist’s name is Thora Grieve???? Why is this set in a fictional, albeit vaguely Italian-inspired, world, yet the characters reference figures from Greek mythology and smallpox? Who thought «speak in the plain fucking common tongue» sounded good? Why is this tagged as adult fiction but reads as YA all the way through, except for the sex scenes maybe. So yeah. Quite disappointed.
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Thank you to Orbit/Little, Brown UK for the ARC