A review by ele_pare1
Starling by Isabel Strychacz

2.0

It was wayyyy too focused on romance and the romance wasn’t even that good or deep. The idea of this book was super interesting, but so badly exploited. Nothing was explained, the whole book was the characters worrying about the same thing over and over : "what if I stay here am it makes me selfish?", "what if my sister leaves me and I am alone ?", "what if I love someone else than Tag?", "what if I am not like my dad and people are just so very mean to me just because I am a Rocksford?". Like honestly I got it after the first five times it was mentioned. No character development whatsoever except maybe Starling as he becomes a bit more human-like, but even then he just loses all that progression at the end by ignoring his newly acquired emotions and leaving anyways.

The story also stopped super abruptly and confusingly… like how/why are they still living in Darling after they literally burned their house?? It certainly isn’t because just the mayor got arrested that suddenly everyone is super chill with the Wildling family. It makes no sense to me.

Again, could’ve been a great book if it was less beating around the bush and more action and progression quest-wise and character-wise.

It is also the first book from this author so I will give her the benefit of the doubt, but ain’t no way no one noticed the characters didn’t change a bit from start to finish…

Anyways,

Thank you <3