A review by imme_van_gorp
Lightlark by Alex Aster

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

1.5

Well, what can I say? It’s not like I hadn’t been warned this book would be bad. I had. And those people were right. I should have listened.

But honestly though, it’s not like this book didn’t have potential. It definitely did. I think the premise truly was very cool and intriguing, and even the plot itself could have been good. But all of that potential was simply wasted on piss-poor execution. 

Firstly, the writing was very dull and lifeless; it didn’t have a hint of charm to it. The pacing was horrendous as well; there were way too many completely irrelevant and unnecessary descriptions, and nothing ever seemed to happen. It was super slow and boring. 

The characters were also insanely superficial and felt more empty than I could have ever thought possible. Their relationships all felt completely random and meaningless as well; nothing held even a hint of depth or intrigue. It was all so… worthless. useless. vain. insubstantial. vacant. boring. 

Speaking of relationships, there is also romance in this book, and even though it’s supposed to play a big part in the story, I didn’t actually feel any romance during the whole book. There’s supposedly a love triangle going on, but one of the guys was already in love with her from the beginning (because apparently he fell in love with her before the book even started, but we don’t get to know or understand that until the very end??), and the other one apparently fell in love with her throughout the book, but I never would have guessed, since he didn’t act like it whatsoever. This dude was not in love. He simply wasn’t. I don’t care if the book tells me he was, I don’t believe it. 

Thus, all in all, both of these stories had to be the worst romances I have read in a while, cus neither of them actually gave me any romance…

Last but not least, there’s a supremely predictable twist at the end where our main character gets betrayed, but I swear, you have to be the blindest person on the planet to have not seen that one coming. It was obvious from the beginning that a certain someone could not be trusted, so I definitely did not care for that reveal. It was all very anticlimactic and underwhelming.

Long story short, I still think this could have been a good fantasy book. But only if someone else had written it.