h_fish77 's review for:

Beren and Lúthien by J.R.R. Tolkien

DID NOT FINISH: 33%

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I found this read very confusing and frustrating. I was craving a classic middle earth romance from the amazing world of Tolkien; a forbidden love story between man and elf but this did not deliver in the way I expected. I stopped about 33% of the way through. The secondary half of this book was a very long and confusing poem that was another 150 pages long and felt like it wasn’t necessary to the story. I just wanted a killer romantic/fantasy epic and only about 25% of this book was actually a story. The other 75% was Christopher Tolkien nit-picking apart his dad’s journals and notes and attempting to piece together the bits and pieces of Beren and Luthien while telling some long winded history of middle earth. Ultimately the parts of this book worth reading were inevitably quite short and I did not feel the need to finish the rest. I really wanted to like this book, in fact I admire classic fantasy like Tolkien and I was utterly disappointed that this story was not what I thought it was.