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A review by mayah
Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
I found this pretty underwhelming. I need to think about this more, but my rating is probably more of a 2.5
I liked the magic and magical realism but I felt the foreshadowing was really heavy handed, made the plot super obvious and therefore not that interesting. Also, a lot of reviews for this book contain trigger warnings, which is great, but in this book that trigger warning was the whole plot? Because I had the trigger warning, I honestly predicted every single thing that happened in the book. Because I could predict every. single. thing. that happened, I didn’t really feel much impact?
Normally I don’t read books just for the plot, but the main character in this book was not compelling or interesting. She didn’t really have a personality and didn’t experience any growth or development as a character. Also, there are a lot of side characters in this book and all the relationships with them felt very underdeveloped.
So yeah, the Oceanside magical setting was cool and atmospheric and I really enjoyed that, but the rest of the book was meh. I also didn’t like the ending? I get that this book is ~magical~ but the way that it wrapped up was so simplistic and idealistic and it left me frustrated at its simplicity rather than satisfied.
So yeah, this was really underwhelming for me.
I liked the magic and magical realism but I felt the foreshadowing was really heavy handed, made the plot super obvious and therefore not that interesting. Also, a lot of reviews for this book contain trigger warnings, which is great, but in this book that trigger warning was the whole plot? Because I had the trigger warning, I honestly predicted every single thing that happened in the book. Because I could predict every. single. thing. that happened, I didn’t really feel much impact?
Normally I don’t read books just for the plot, but the main character in this book was not compelling or interesting. She didn’t really have a personality and didn’t experience any growth or development as a character. Also, there are a lot of side characters in this book and all the relationships with them felt very underdeveloped.
So yeah, the Oceanside magical setting was cool and atmospheric and I really enjoyed that, but the rest of the book was meh. I also didn’t like the ending? I get that this book is ~magical~ but the way that it wrapped up was so simplistic and idealistic and it left me frustrated at its simplicity rather than satisfied.
So yeah, this was really underwhelming for me.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault