enoughtotemptme 's review for:

The Dark Lord Clementine by Sarah Jean Horwitz

DID NOT FINISH

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I did not finish this book. I give it a solid 75 pages, but the pacing is just too slow. I saw it in the bookstore and fell in love with the premise and the cover, but decided I'd try it out from the library before I invest in a copy for the library I run. Sadly, I don't think most kids would read this--if I can't slog through it, I doubt they're going to. It's not a badly-written book by any means. Some things are charming and the world-building was decent. On a technical level, the prose is competent. But by 75 pages, nothing happened that hadn't already happened in the first 10: her father is cursed, his magic starts going wrong, Clementine is worried. The story needs work and the pacing needs reworking.