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samandthebookstack 's review for:
Luminiferos: The Omen of Light
by Yana Metro
medium-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Reading the summary of this book, I was rather excited. A fusion of romance, fantasy, and philosophy. A young FMC searching for another world, a world she is certain she was once part of... I was in precisely the right mood for such an adventure when I opened this up on my Kindle and dived in.
The story is told through the FMC's point of view, and while I generally enjoy 1st person POV, I hated it in this story. The FMC, Lilly, spends essentially the entire story doubting and second-guessing herself. I've never read something where the excessive descriptive prose actually got on my nerves. It was too much. Everything was described in so much detail that it became tedious. There was so much telling and very little showing through the whole story, All of those things ended up souring the experience for me. I didn't connect to the characters really at all.
The pacing was also an issue for me. A few chapters in, once Lilly has achieved the very important goal of finding the parallel world she dreamed of her whole life, the story then skips ahead two months. Although Lilly has found her true home and met lots of new people, the story skips ahead and we get zero insight into Lilly's experiences settling into this new world. While we're promised the found family trope, we're simply told that Lilly cares for her new friends but we never see how she actually formed those bonds because it gets skipped over. Then there's Lilly's relationship with Will. We are set up to expect angst between the two of them, but because the story skips forward the way it does, we see none of the details of how their relationship grows. We learn that Will is tasked with watching her in a way that hints that there will be some tension because he perhaps doesn't trust her. But once the story skips ahead, Lilly and Will are in love and all the little details we got up to that point are essentially forgotten. I don't hate the insta-love trope, but I do hate it when a story sets the reader up for specific things and then fails to deliver. I also hated how preachy Will's dialogue felt at times. He sounded like a positivity guru...but a toxic one.
I really wanted to love this story so much. The cover is absolutely stunning. The premise is truly interesting but it just fell utterly flat for me under the weight of poor pacing, preachy undertones of love and light versus dark, redundant descriptive prose, and flat characters whose names I forgot within hours of reading.
As always, I want to thank the author and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review a copy of this e-ARC.
The story is told through the FMC's point of view, and while I generally enjoy 1st person POV, I hated it in this story. The FMC, Lilly, spends essentially the entire story doubting and second-guessing herself. I've never read something where the excessive descriptive prose actually got on my nerves. It was too much. Everything was described in so much detail that it became tedious. There was so much telling and very little showing through the whole story, All of those things ended up souring the experience for me. I didn't connect to the characters really at all.
The pacing was also an issue for me. A few chapters in, once Lilly has achieved the very important goal of finding the parallel world she dreamed of her whole life, the story then skips ahead two months. Although Lilly has found her true home and met lots of new people, the story skips ahead and we get zero insight into Lilly's experiences settling into this new world. While we're promised the found family trope, we're simply told that Lilly cares for her new friends but we never see how she actually formed those bonds because it gets skipped over. Then there's Lilly's relationship with Will. We are set up to expect angst between the two of them, but because the story skips forward the way it does, we see none of the details of how their relationship grows. We learn that Will is tasked with watching her in a way that hints that there will be some tension because he perhaps doesn't trust her. But once the story skips ahead, Lilly and Will are in love and all the little details we got up to that point are essentially forgotten. I don't hate the insta-love trope, but I do hate it when a story sets the reader up for specific things and then fails to deliver. I also hated how preachy Will's dialogue felt at times. He sounded like a positivity guru...but a toxic one.
I really wanted to love this story so much. The cover is absolutely stunning. The premise is truly interesting but it just fell utterly flat for me under the weight of poor pacing, preachy undertones of love and light versus dark, redundant descriptive prose, and flat characters whose names I forgot within hours of reading.
As always, I want to thank the author and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review a copy of this e-ARC.