A review by gaby_readsbooks
The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers

mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

This book had so much potential and some beautiful writing at times but I just could not get into it. I think my main issues were the structure, lack of world building and the 3rd person narrative. This is a story about a woman who is trying to end a curse on her family and there’s a magical world. Sounds super cool, like it would have lots of adventure and an exciting pace to end the curse by a timeline. But I found myself bored a lot of times and the pacing would speed up and slow down a lot when it should have been ramping up.  The characters didn’t really feel fleshed out and would sometimes do something that didn’t make any sense or we would hear about something they did off page. I couldn’t get invested in any of the characters at all, the world was interesting but not explained in an understandable way. I think if the structure of the book had been tweaked a bit it could have made a difference. While this has beautiful descriptive writing and an interesting concept and magical world it didn’t quite succeed in creating the magic of The Night Circus or Addie LaRue which it has comparisons to. I’m sad because it did have some cool concepts that I haven’t seen in other fantasy books but it just didn’t deliver for me,

Thanks to NetGalley and Redhook Books for granting me access to the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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