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By Book or By Crook
by Eva Gates
1.5/5
There are so many things that definitely were working in favour for this book, but sadly, so much went wrong. The story started out, okay if one could suspend belief that a library could actually fit in a lighthouse. However, things started going downhill from there. The development around Louise Jane's antics was clunky and cringe-worthy, and FMC's reaction to them seemed to be forced by the author and was rather mind-boggling. Worse was the utter lack of security in the library; especially one that supposedly had a very valuable set of books loaned to them. Somehow, the concept of controlled environments and security requirements to protect the books completely vanished, but hey! the characters were required to wear white gloves to handle the books because whatever.
I found it interesting that the FMC comments about caring about taking care of books and their condition, yet she had no qualms about reading on the beach and having her book getting sprayed by sea water. That cannot be good for the book. Add to all this some bizarre notions of library science (a Master's program of study) and some pretty clear instances of body shaming and I was sorely tempted to DNF this. I somehow managed to rage-finish this book which had an obvious, stereotypical ending for such a setting.
Really disappointed with this book and the author, and will not be continuing with this series.
There are so many things that definitely were working in favour for this book, but sadly, so much went wrong. The story started out, okay if one could suspend belief that a library could actually fit in a lighthouse. However, things started going downhill from there. The development around Louise Jane's antics was clunky and cringe-worthy, and FMC's reaction to them seemed to be forced by the author and was rather mind-boggling. Worse was the utter lack of security in the library; especially one that supposedly had a very valuable set of books loaned to them. Somehow, the concept of controlled environments and security requirements to protect the books completely vanished, but hey! the characters were required to wear white gloves to handle the books because whatever.
I found it interesting that the FMC comments about caring about taking care of books and their condition, yet she had no qualms about reading on the beach and having her book getting sprayed by sea water. That cannot be good for the book. Add to all this some bizarre notions of library science (a Master's program of study) and some pretty clear instances of body shaming and I was sorely tempted to DNF this. I somehow managed to rage-finish this book which had an obvious, stereotypical ending for such a setting.
Really disappointed with this book and the author, and will not be continuing with this series.