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slavicsongbird 's review for:
The Summer Children
by Dot Hutchison
If I could, I would give this book 0.5 stars. The Butterfly Garden was so great, so fantastic to read I promised myself I would read the whole trilogy. Roses of May was worse but still readable (I left a review for that one too). But what the hell was this book?
First of all, let me say that the story had great potential from start to finish, but it was not used at all. And what I complained about in my Roses of May review exponentially grew here. Sometimes it felt like a teenager writing fanfiction wrote this novel, and because I know what the author can do, it was even more disappointing.
Humour, I cannot get past the humour. For example: Stearling sneaking up on Eddison and scaring him wasn't too funny the first time, why does it need to be repeated at least 6 times in the book? Another example is present in the last two books, the fact that anytime a possibility that a woman could hang out with the already present female characters, the next sentense is sure to be "Poor Eddison." On top of that, Eddison in particular seems to be a completely different character than people who know him very well think he is.
But let's get more general and think about the book as a whole. Comparing all the main characters from the first book and the third. In the first, Inara and Bliss were lovable; compassionate and strong. In this one, they are just annoying and one-dimentional - Bliss is an angry bitch with a heart and Inara is a stoic with a heart who has warmed to her 'family'. Apparently we are calling victims family now. And the policemen? I mentioned Eddison, Vic is just a daddy shaddow on a page, and Romiras? All of a sudden she speaks Spanglish, which is written so unbelievably it is hardly worthy of an eye-roll. She and Eddison now suddenly speak it and address each other as hermano/a. Stearling is suddenly on the team (not going into that) and they all have teenage girl sleepovers.
In short, this book made me angry from the beginning and I only read it because I promised myself to finish the trilogy and because despite everything, I wanted to know what will happen to the fantastic characters from The Garden. But in all honesty, my opinion is that the book is very lazily written.
First of all, let me say that the story had great potential from start to finish, but it was not used at all. And what I complained about in my Roses of May review exponentially grew here. Sometimes it felt like a teenager writing fanfiction wrote this novel, and because I know what the author can do, it was even more disappointing.
Humour, I cannot get past the humour. For example: Stearling sneaking up on Eddison and scaring him wasn't too funny the first time, why does it need to be repeated at least 6 times in the book? Another example is present in the last two books, the fact that anytime a possibility that a woman could hang out with the already present female characters, the next sentense is sure to be "Poor Eddison." On top of that, Eddison in particular seems to be a completely different character than people who know him very well think he is.
But let's get more general and think about the book as a whole. Comparing all the main characters from the first book and the third. In the first, Inara and Bliss were lovable; compassionate and strong. In this one, they are just annoying and one-dimentional - Bliss is an angry bitch with a heart and Inara is a stoic with a heart who has warmed to her 'family'. Apparently we are calling victims family now. And the policemen? I mentioned Eddison, Vic is just a daddy shaddow on a page, and Romiras? All of a sudden she speaks Spanglish, which is written so unbelievably it is hardly worthy of an eye-roll. She and Eddison now suddenly speak it and address each other as hermano/a. Stearling is suddenly on the team (not going into that) and they all have teenage girl sleepovers.
In short, this book made me angry from the beginning and I only read it because I promised myself to finish the trilogy and because despite everything, I wanted to know what will happen to the fantastic characters from The Garden. But in all honesty, my opinion is that the book is very lazily written.