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A review by wilczynska
Night Shine by Tessa Gratton
2.0
DNF. I tried hard with this book, because it has themes that I think are so important for young people, especially right now, as folx start to more strongly consider who they are and what that means within the larger landscape. It has strong, clear messages about not jumping to conclusions about who someone else is, understanding that no one has to be just one extreme or another but can embrace multiple identities at the same time, which can in fact make people stronger in who they are, rather than being less.
I give this book a low rating because of the extremely heavy burden of the descriptions. The first 80 pages involves a journey, but the travel experiences are less than secondary to the world-building and overly detailed descriptions of this fantasy realm, some of which never play any major part in the story itself. Later on, entire paragraphs are dedicated to descriptions of dresses (of frequently contrasting color combinations, fwiw) or multiple paragraphs describing rooms. All the description becomes overwhelming at times and detracts from the story. And since so much time was spent on the descriptions and world-building elements, the story became severely lacking and almost disjointed.
I read about 3/4 of the book and I just couldn't bring myself to read to the end because I ceased to care. It makes me very sad because I think this could be such a powerful book. I hope there are future books that have a similar philosophy toward not conforming to dichotomies and inhabiting the in-between spaces.
I give this book a low rating because of the extremely heavy burden of the descriptions. The first 80 pages involves a journey, but the travel experiences are less than secondary to the world-building and overly detailed descriptions of this fantasy realm, some of which never play any major part in the story itself. Later on, entire paragraphs are dedicated to descriptions of dresses (of frequently contrasting color combinations, fwiw) or multiple paragraphs describing rooms. All the description becomes overwhelming at times and detracts from the story. And since so much time was spent on the descriptions and world-building elements, the story became severely lacking and almost disjointed.
I read about 3/4 of the book and I just couldn't bring myself to read to the end because I ceased to care. It makes me very sad because I think this could be such a powerful book. I hope there are future books that have a similar philosophy toward not conforming to dichotomies and inhabiting the in-between spaces.