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A review by wordwoonders
Walking on Knives by Maya Chhabra
1.0
I received an eArc of this book from the publishers through Netgalley in exchange of an honest review
Full review originally posted on my blog: Word Wonders
CW: Rape, dubious consent.
So. I think this is my first one starred book in a long time, I just… didn’t find anything redeemable about it. Every aspect was lacking. The plot, the world, the characters. I couldn’t find anything to hold on to and the only reason I finished it is how short it is. Don’t get me wrong, the premise is interesting and it even starts off promising but it falls flat pretty early on.
The writing is very flowery, too flowery, in my opinion, combined with all the rest, it just makes the story unnecessarily heavy and hard to read. For how short it is, I shouldn’t have been exhausted by reading it, but I really was tired when I finished it. Some word combinations and metaphors didn’t make sense so it was all around not the kind of writing I enjoy. The story had me very excited at first, that’s why I requested the book, “a dark little mermaid retelling where the mermaid falls for a witch instead of the prince”? YES PLEASE. But no.
The plot was confusing and all over the place, what made it even hard to grasp and focus on is how many POVs there were, and for something so short, it doesn’t work, especially since the voices aren’t distinct, they all read the same so it takes a couple paragraphs to know who is narrating. Also, the romance??? What was that? The witch loved her when I can count the times they interacted on one hand and the only meaningful conversation out of those is when she confessed her feelings. And the mermaid herself was pinning over the prince one moment and running off with the witch the next. None of it is developped enough to be believable.
Also, can we talk about the opening scene? That angered me like no other. It’s a rape scene that’s not handled well. First of all, if that’s what’s called “dubious consent” in the blurb, I disagree, it’s non-consensual, it’s rape and very graphic at that. The little mermaid is raped by the sea witch (the love interest’s sister) as part of the bargain and we never know any details about said bargain. What I can call dubious consent though, is a scene towards the end where both parties don’t really wanna have sex but do it anyway. All in all. This is a huge no from me.
Full review originally posted on my blog: Word Wonders
CW: Rape, dubious consent.
So. I think this is my first one starred book in a long time, I just… didn’t find anything redeemable about it. Every aspect was lacking. The plot, the world, the characters. I couldn’t find anything to hold on to and the only reason I finished it is how short it is. Don’t get me wrong, the premise is interesting and it even starts off promising but it falls flat pretty early on.
The writing is very flowery, too flowery, in my opinion, combined with all the rest, it just makes the story unnecessarily heavy and hard to read. For how short it is, I shouldn’t have been exhausted by reading it, but I really was tired when I finished it. Some word combinations and metaphors didn’t make sense so it was all around not the kind of writing I enjoy. The story had me very excited at first, that’s why I requested the book, “a dark little mermaid retelling where the mermaid falls for a witch instead of the prince”? YES PLEASE. But no.
The plot was confusing and all over the place, what made it even hard to grasp and focus on is how many POVs there were, and for something so short, it doesn’t work, especially since the voices aren’t distinct, they all read the same so it takes a couple paragraphs to know who is narrating. Also, the romance??? What was that? The witch loved her when I can count the times they interacted on one hand and the only meaningful conversation out of those is when she confessed her feelings. And the mermaid herself was pinning over the prince one moment and running off with the witch the next. None of it is developped enough to be believable.
Also, can we talk about the opening scene? That angered me like no other. It’s a rape scene that’s not handled well. First of all, if that’s what’s called “dubious consent” in the blurb, I disagree, it’s non-consensual, it’s rape and very graphic at that. The little mermaid is raped by the sea witch (the love interest’s sister) as part of the bargain and we never know any details about said bargain. What I can call dubious consent though, is a scene towards the end where both parties don’t really wanna have sex but do it anyway. All in all. This is a huge no from me.