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It hurts my heart to do this :(
DNFed at about 50%
I was soooo excited about this book! I’ve grown up loving the music of this opera and have seen the movie several times (still wishing the play would be reproduced so I can see it with my own eyes). So I was super curious when I read the premises, but also a little worried. How is one off my favorite childhood stories translated in a book? This book came in my February Booklybird box.
But unfortunately I just couldn’t finish this. The writing style was too detailed and things just took forever, the pacing was off, things got revealed in the wrong order and the plot was strange, I just hated the supernatural that was mixed with it. I couldn’t fight through it right now but I think that I will pick it up in a few months and try again!
I absolutely love the cover(and that’s about the only thing I like about this book), it’s gorgeous! I love the reference to the original story and to this one. The girl looks exactly like I pictured Rune. It’s so mysterious and beautiful. And also the first few pages have gorgeous designs. I love the thorns on every chapter and I really liked that the fond was in red (Howard’s books all have another color text). It’s so original and it fits this book perfectly!
The beginning was a little.. overwhelming. I felt like Howard was trying to tell Runes whole childhood in 10 pages AND tried to tell what they did that morning AND also where they were going and why. The story kept switching to different time periods and memories and I just wanted to know what this school was. My other problem was that it was soooo slow and dragging. It took forever for Rune to arrive at the school and for the story to become interesting. What I did really like was that this book had me already tearing up on page 20.
The story took quite a while to become interesting. The beginning is quite ordinary and I kept mixing up story’s like the series ‘Fallen’ with this one. It was really like any other YA story; one mysterious guy, one or two rivals, one best friend, mix that with a spooky surrounding and Rune being the chosen one everyone has been looking for, for years and having a talent like no other. AND TADAA an ordinary YA story.. Sigh, I’m so bored and I wanted so much more from a Phantom of the Opera retelling!
I didn’t like that the whole plot was about bullying Rune and letting her believe she was crazy. That had nothing to do with The Phantom of the Opera and it actually was done really poor and boring. I felt sorry for Rune, and I actually really liked her, and I hated to read about what Thorne was going to do to her next. I found Rune easy to connect with from the beginning(maybe because all her childhood memory’s got forced on me). I didn’t really know what to think about her ‘talent’ though.. I just felt bad for her most of the time because I felt that it was forced on her and she couldn’t help herself. I didn’t find the aspects about aura’s and the supernatural things fitting in this concept. The Phantom of the Opera is dark and spooky but everything about that story is still realistic and could have happened and for me that was the power of that story! So I was a bit surprised to find supernatural beings in this book. I didn’t find it suiting in this concept and wasn’t expecting fantasy aspects in this book. This supernatural stuff was stayed super vague and weird. I don’t like that and I kept thinking JUST TELL ME ALREADY!! AHHH But man that was weird these creatures that sucked live out of people. And voices that make you confess your darkest sins. It was all just a bit weird and incoherent. When the cat picked locks Howard completely lost me. With his nails??? What?? HOW??
I wasn’t a fan off the literal reference to the phantom of the opera. And I mean that Rune read about the academy in a book about the Phantom of the Opera. I would have rather just have the phantom twist be a surprise for the reader and Rune and then pick up clues as the story line continued. Now it was just so predictable and literally. For her to find the mirrors scary and the guy with the cape. I didn’t like that Erik, the actual phantom played a part in this story. And I hated how my original memory of him got destroyed. It was more like a sequel and a follow up on the Phantom of the Opera then an retelling.
Howard is a very descriptive writer. And that could be wonderful (and I understand if some people really enjoyed reading this), but I would rather have things left to my imagination than page after page full off descriptions. There is a chapter in this book where like five teachers walk in and there are literally four pages written about how they look and what Rune’s impression off them is. I’m not going to remember who is who if you bomb me with that many information! It started to get annoying after a while because I think without those this book wouldn’t even been 300 pages, (and I would have much rather had that because this made it so slow and unpleasant to read). But where the descriptions where really handy was with the music and when Rune got taken over. It was so vivid and alive, I felt like I could hear every note and every word though there never was one note written down in this book. My compliments to Howard for this. However the downside was that I couldn’t always follow what was happening, a lot of times it was super unclear. I get that Rune also don’t get what’s happening, but I’m a reader so I need to know! I also was really annoyed with the word; ‘feeling’. Rune always had this “feeling”. What do you mean? Is this good or bad, what are you feeling????
I was just really switching between liking it and not. There where chapters that where just so good, vivid and emotional, that I couldn’t stop reading. They mostly where memories or flashbacks. One of them was the story about how Thorne ended up with Erik. That story just broke my heart! This was so emotionally and tear-jerking. And that’s mainly why I didn’t rate this book 1 star. So I don’t get that if Howard can write a flashback like THAT, that the writing style of the whole other book needed to be soo… terrible.
Thorne was also awful and super flat. I didn’t know much about him besides that he liked to bully Rune, did everything Erik said and had a terrible youth. Maybe later in the book his personality shows a bit more,I really hope if I’m going to give this another shot because it was really something I missed. The first 180 pages he just creeps around and bully’s Rune. That made me REALLY dislike him, his chapters are sooooo slow and boring. In the Phantom of the Opera, the phantom is creepy but he is also mysterious and enigmatic. That was a thing that I really missed with Throne, he was just this stalker that I knew nothing about, and that really made me dislike him. And after reading 200 pages of a book I need to know what someone’s deal is, especially when there are so many useless pages about him.
So I felt like a book where I disliked one of the main characters, I found the writing style awful and the plot terrible, wasn’t worth it to keep reading. I just couldn’t handle one more page!
DNFed at about 50%
I was soooo excited about this book! I’ve grown up loving the music of this opera and have seen the movie several times (still wishing the play would be reproduced so I can see it with my own eyes). So I was super curious when I read the premises, but also a little worried. How is one off my favorite childhood stories translated in a book? This book came in my February Booklybird box.
But unfortunately I just couldn’t finish this. The writing style was too detailed and things just took forever, the pacing was off, things got revealed in the wrong order and the plot was strange, I just hated the supernatural that was mixed with it. I couldn’t fight through it right now but I think that I will pick it up in a few months and try again!
I absolutely love the cover
The beginning was a little.. overwhelming. I felt like Howard was trying to tell Runes whole childhood in 10 pages AND tried to tell what they did that morning AND also where they were going and why. The story kept switching to different time periods and memories and I just wanted to know what this school was. My other problem was that it was soooo slow and dragging. It took forever for Rune to arrive at the school and for the story to become interesting. What I did really like was that this book had me already tearing up on page 20.
The story took quite a while to become interesting. The beginning is quite ordinary and I kept mixing up story’s like the series ‘Fallen’ with this one. It was really like any other YA story; one mysterious guy, one or two rivals, one best friend, mix that with a spooky surrounding and Rune being the chosen one everyone has been looking for, for years and having a talent like no other. AND TADAA an ordinary YA story.. Sigh, I’m so bored and I wanted so much more from a Phantom of the Opera retelling!
I didn’t like that the whole plot was about bullying Rune and letting her believe she was crazy. That had nothing to do with The Phantom of the Opera and it actually was done really poor and boring. I felt sorry for Rune, and I actually really liked her, and I hated to read about what Thorne was going to do to her next. I found Rune easy to connect with from the beginning
I wasn’t a fan off the literal reference to the phantom of the opera. And I mean that Rune read about the academy in a book about the Phantom of the Opera. I would have rather just have the phantom twist be a surprise for the reader and Rune and then pick up clues as the story line continued. Now it was just so predictable and literally. For her to find the mirrors scary and the guy with the cape. I didn’t like that Erik, the actual phantom played a part in this story. And I hated how my original memory of him got destroyed. It was more like a sequel and a follow up on the Phantom of the Opera then an retelling.
Howard is a very descriptive writer. And that could be wonderful (and I understand if some people really enjoyed reading this), but I would rather have things left to my imagination than page after page full off descriptions. There is a chapter in this book where like five teachers walk in and there are literally four pages written about how they look and what Rune’s impression off them is. I’m not going to remember who is who if you bomb me with that many information! It started to get annoying after a while because I think without those this book wouldn’t even been 300 pages, (and I would have much rather had that because this made it so slow and unpleasant to read). But where the descriptions where really handy was with the music and when Rune got taken over. It was so vivid and alive, I felt like I could hear every note and every word though there never was one note written down in this book. My compliments to Howard for this. However the downside was that I couldn’t always follow what was happening, a lot of times it was super unclear. I get that Rune also don’t get what’s happening, but I’m a reader so I need to know! I also was really annoyed with the word; ‘feeling’. Rune always had this “feeling”. What do you mean? Is this good or bad, what are you feeling????
I was just really switching between liking it and not. There where chapters that where just so good, vivid and emotional, that I couldn’t stop reading. They mostly where memories or flashbacks. One of them was the story about how Thorne ended up with Erik. That story just broke my heart! This was so emotionally and tear-jerking. And that’s mainly why I didn’t rate this book 1 star. So I don’t get that if Howard can write a flashback like THAT, that the writing style of the whole other book needed to be soo… terrible.
Thorne was also awful and super flat. I didn’t know much about him besides that he liked to bully Rune, did everything Erik said and had a terrible youth. Maybe later in the book his personality shows a bit more,
So I felt like a book where I disliked one of the main characters, I found the writing style awful and the plot terrible, wasn’t worth it to keep reading. I just couldn’t handle one more page!