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kaa 's review for:
Tam Lin: A Modern, Queer Retelling
by T.J. Deschamps
I was really intrigued by the idea of a queer re-telling of Tam Lin, but unfortunately this book was a complete disappointment. Honestly, it just feels incomplete - the outline of a story is there, but it's missing most of the details that would help me understand what is going on and care about the characters. Additionally, the editing is poor - the dialogue is clunky, and there are a number of misused or misspelled words.
This is described as a romance, but there was absolutely zero romantic development, just a few sex scenes I didn't care about and a supposedly romantic conclusion. Arial and Tom's relationship got really no development before they separated, and then Tom fell into bed with Aoife and Fergus immediately, leaving that relationship underdeveloped as well. I love some good polyam bisexual romance or erotica, but I want to actually care about the characters and relationships, and feel their attraction to each other, even if they're only together for a night. I didn't get any that of that here.
And then all of a sudden the fae show up and now we're in a world where magic is real, which felt very jarring. I could see that the author was trying to foreshadow this earlier in the book, although I didn't think this was very well done, but it felt like an abrupt shift when it appeared. The remainder of the story was just event after event, with no time to slow down or actually feel what was happening, and there were some reversals near the ending that didn't feel impactful or earned because of how quickly everything moved. And the epilogues were more confusing than anything.
I'm sad to give this such a poor review, because I do like the idea, but I think it could have used a lot of expansion to make the characters and story more comprehensible and appealing, as well as another round of copy-editing.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC of this book.
This is described as a romance, but there was absolutely zero romantic development, just a few sex scenes I didn't care about and a supposedly romantic conclusion. Arial and Tom's relationship got really no development before they separated, and then Tom fell into bed with Aoife and Fergus immediately, leaving that relationship underdeveloped as well. I love some good polyam bisexual romance or erotica, but I want to actually care about the characters and relationships, and feel their attraction to each other, even if they're only together for a night. I didn't get any that of that here.
And then all of a sudden the fae show up and now we're in a world where magic is real, which felt very jarring. I could see that the author was trying to foreshadow this earlier in the book, although I didn't think this was very well done, but it felt like an abrupt shift when it appeared. The remainder of the story was just event after event, with no time to slow down or actually feel what was happening, and there were some reversals near the ending that didn't feel impactful or earned because of how quickly everything moved. And the epilogues were more confusing than anything.
I'm sad to give this such a poor review, because I do like the idea, but I think it could have used a lot of expansion to make the characters and story more comprehensible and appealing, as well as another round of copy-editing.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC of this book.