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A review by nitzanschwarz
Adventures of a Graveyard Girl by Milda Harris
Did not finish book. Stopped at 48%.
Wow, a third DNF review in so many weeks. I know this makes me look bad, I do, but I swear things are not as bad as they seem. I only have thirteen books marked a DNF on Goodreads. I probably have a few more I didn't mark, but no more than twenty, twenty-five - in three years of over 470 books. That's a pretty good percentile, don't you think? I don't DNF that often or that willingly. At least, I didn't use to.
But I think I've also reached the point where I treasure the enjoyment I get from every book, and if I don't really enjoy it... well, there isn't much point in reading it, is there?
Still, I don't always review DNF books... Only if I can explain exactly why I didn't finish it, and I'd like to share that.
I picked up this book because a while back (like, two years ago), I read the first book and enjoyed it. It wasn't A-mazing, but it was cute and fun, and I decided I wanted to continue with the series. But then I couldn't. At 48% of the book, I called it quits. My heart just wasn't in it. I kept looking at reading the book as a chore, which is never encouraging.
I had three big issues with Adventures of a Graveyard Girl.
1. It was way too... dare I say it?... childish to me. I don't need characters to be my age to enjoy them, but here they just read like immature 12-year-olds and not teenagers. And I've read and enjoyed books with twelve year old more than this. It was just... too exaggeratedly childish. Teenagers are allowed to have their immature moments, for sure, but not 100% of the time.
2. Then there was the poorly edited text. There were a lot of missing punctuation marks or places where I felt a dot should've been but wasn't. There were a lot of duplicated words in a way that made no sense. A lot of the describing sentences lacked finesse. It felt like... well, like an amateur job. Like no one actually read over the book and corrected all of these. It was like reading a draft and not a finished product. And I don't know about you, but that bothers me.
3. And finally, the repetition. How many times can you say the same thing on one page? apparently, a lot. Enough that I totally lost count. It was like Harris didn't trust we got the information the first time, so she mentioned it 50 times more just to be sure. In very similar wording. That's one of my major writing pet peeves.
So, in the end, despite enjoying the first book, I decided this is as far as I and this series go. It's just not for me, really.
But I think I've also reached the point where I treasure the enjoyment I get from every book, and if I don't really enjoy it... well, there isn't much point in reading it, is there?
Still, I don't always review DNF books... Only if I can explain exactly why I didn't finish it, and I'd like to share that.
I picked up this book because a while back (like, two years ago), I read the first book and enjoyed it. It wasn't A-mazing, but it was cute and fun, and I decided I wanted to continue with the series. But then I couldn't. At 48% of the book, I called it quits. My heart just wasn't in it. I kept looking at reading the book as a chore, which is never encouraging.
I had three big issues with Adventures of a Graveyard Girl.
1. It was way too... dare I say it?... childish to me. I don't need characters to be my age to enjoy them, but here they just read like immature 12-year-olds and not teenagers. And I've read and enjoyed books with twelve year old more than this. It was just... too exaggeratedly childish. Teenagers are allowed to have their immature moments, for sure, but not 100% of the time.
2. Then there was the poorly edited text. There were a lot of missing punctuation marks or places where I felt a dot should've been but wasn't. There were a lot of duplicated words in a way that made no sense. A lot of the describing sentences lacked finesse. It felt like... well, like an amateur job. Like no one actually read over the book and corrected all of these. It was like reading a draft and not a finished product. And I don't know about you, but that bothers me.
3. And finally, the repetition. How many times can you say the same thing on one page? apparently, a lot. Enough that I totally lost count. It was like Harris didn't trust we got the information the first time, so she mentioned it 50 times more just to be sure. In very similar wording. That's one of my major writing pet peeves.
So, in the end, despite enjoying the first book, I decided this is as far as I and this series go. It's just not for me, really.