A review by letrickster
Ruinsong by Julia Ember

adventurous dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

It was fine? I'm not a huge YA person so that definitely affected my opinion but it really just didn't do it for me. The romance and the ending were incredibly rushed and it all felt like it got resolved way too neatly and easily. Despite this, it was also incredibly slow. I really enjoyed the first quarter or so of the book. I think the tension was set up well and the scenes were suitably unsettling. Then things slowed down pretty hard, and very little happened. As it wore on I just got very bored, I almost dnfed but I managed to skim through to the end, although it didn't much improve my opinion. I really wish the middle section
when Cadence and Remi are together at the palace was longer and had some more intrigue. It felt like it was only a few days, which in my mind, didn't feel like enough time for any of the things that happened to occur. Remi was threatened, but I feel like she didn't really end up being used against Cadence at all. The stakes just felt really low.


I wanted to romance to be good, and I felt like it would've been if it had more time to develop, but it felt really unearned. 

The characters were just fine, they're teenagers so I can excuse a lot of their choices behaviour based on that, but I just ended up not really caring about them. I liked Cadence a lot at the beginning, but idk by the end I was just kinda done.

I really wish I liked it more, I wanted to, I think it's decent YA but it just Really did not do it for me.
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