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A review by kaulhilo
Always, in December by Emily Stone
2.0
well, this was a weird little book.
for starters, the usual thing: why is this book being marketed and sold as romance? it's exploitative to your readership, disrespectful and uncaring to the genre as a whole. i won't go on about this, because just about every review for this book says something along these lines, but yeah, it was annoying and even though i was fully "expecting" it, [the ending] came out of nowhere and was probably one of the most insensitive things i've ever read.
i think this book can be aptly and completely summarized by: a girl looking for closure, on every page and every sentence, and simply never finding it. (oh, at least not well after the book's ended, and then we find offscreen that it's all good! she's excellent!) satisfying, isn't it?
the story itself, barring how it ended, was boring; it flows out smoothly enough in the before portion, if a bit fast, and there were a few moments i actually liked both the main characters and what they (potentially) had with each other. the after half was where the book goes downhill.
it felt like a weird rendition of four weddings and a funeral (haha, get it? funeral?), except it was mind-numbing, had too many characters i couldn't tell apart for the life of me, and the story went in circles for the last 150 pages simply because the author just had to force the shock factor in the last scene.
this is probably a book that shouldn't have been written, at least not like this, because it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth; the lack of respect for the reader, the characters, and the genre,... something very odd about all of it.
1.5/5 stars, rounded off to 2, because while every part of this book was very disappointing, it started out okay. not extraordinarily good, but entertaining enough.
for starters, the usual thing: why is this book being marketed and sold as romance? it's exploitative to your readership, disrespectful and uncaring to the genre as a whole. i won't go on about this, because just about every review for this book says something along these lines, but yeah, it was annoying and even though i was fully "expecting" it, [the ending] came out of nowhere and was probably one of the most insensitive things i've ever read.
i think this book can be aptly and completely summarized by: a girl looking for closure, on every page and every sentence, and simply never finding it. (oh, at least not well after the book's ended, and then we find offscreen that it's all good! she's excellent!) satisfying, isn't it?
the story itself, barring how it ended, was boring; it flows out smoothly enough in the before portion, if a bit fast, and there were a few moments i actually liked both the main characters and what they (potentially) had with each other. the after half was where the book goes downhill.
it felt like a weird rendition of four weddings and a funeral (haha, get it? funeral?), except it was mind-numbing, had too many characters i couldn't tell apart for the life of me, and the story went in circles for the last 150 pages simply because the author just had to force the shock factor in the last scene.
this is probably a book that shouldn't have been written, at least not like this, because it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth; the lack of respect for the reader, the characters, and the genre,... something very odd about all of it.
1.5/5 stars, rounded off to 2, because while every part of this book was very disappointing, it started out okay. not extraordinarily good, but entertaining enough.