A review by sreddous
Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater

hopeful lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I feel so ranty about this book. There’s a ton of things I like about it – the premise is cool! Most of the time it’s pretty well-developed how Dora watches characters like Albert and the older women around her and “masks,” that she “learns how to interact with them even though she doesn’t actually understand why they have to do things that way.” The friendship between Dora and her cousin is nice and I love the lack of women-rivalry that is really common in this genre, they’re truly supportive of each other and their communication is clear and straightforward which is refreshing. The plot is maybe a tiny bit slow, but I am glad it isn’t faster because of the whole “I want to watch Dora carefully mull over social interactions and decide the right thing to do or say” formula. So in general, the stuff that built the plot really worked!

What didn't work for me is the romance. It feels like the book is prioritizing, at all costs, the ability to have a snarky snark-fest romance……… even though this plot/curse/magic system and this main character are terrible fits for a sarcastic quippy snarkysnark romantic setup. I could not pair the image in my mind of Dora, a woman who has such a hard time with “subtle” social nuances that she cannot understand why it’s socially awkward to undress to her underwear in public and do her laundry in an outdoor fountain (and I use the word “laundry” because she herself does), also being someone who knows how to have sarcastic “witty” quips with a love interest character. It makes no sense. She cannot feel fiery, quick emotions due to her half-soul situation – but she sure is quick to be snarky snarky because we Must have Snarky Romance At All Costs. I talked about how Dora “masks” and is therefore able to express herself around other characters, but it doesn’t feel like her taking her time to learn how to “mask” while talking to Elias – it comes naturally and fast to her, and that throws the effects and uniqueness of the cool half-soul curse into the garbage. And that’s annoying and immersion-breaking.

Elias, in my opinion, is a frustrating character, not in a fun way. There’s “a misunderstood guy with a heart of gold” as a character type, and then there’s… an actual asshole. He's a bully (he himself uses the word) who calls Dora a dog and a twit to her face. I was rolling my eyes and thinking “oh, lord. What Sad Backstory are we gonna get soon that’s going to ‘make all this verbal abuse okay?’” And that is indeed how things play out. He’s extremely mean to everyone before he ever gets to know them, but only because he cares soooo much about The Children.

Everyone around him including Albert, Dora, and the older ladies have to do the work of managing him and evening out his reactions and emotions. And nah I don’t want to do that work too. 

I wish instead of being a self-righteous jerk, he was simply misunderstood and awkward – how sweet would it have been if Dora and he are the only ones who could understand each other because they’re both simply bad at social conventions and come off as maybe blunt or confusing but are otherwise reasonable people? But, no, that’s just me trying to make this something it isn’t; that’s really not how his character reads. 

Overall, the faerie and magic stuff is super cool, and I thought the ending scenes with the other soul half and the villain were fun and energetic. I said earlier that sometimes the plot is a tiny bit slow (not in a bad way!) but…counter-intuitively, maybe this book is a little too short for all the complicated topics it tries to touch on. Maybe with another 50-100 pages Elias’s character could be more nuanced and the moral lessons could be less cut and dry, but as-is, this was a 3.5 star experience for me personally.
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