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A review by kenziewol
Lightlark by Alex Aster
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I know there are a lot of opinions about this book, but I genuinely enjoyed it. I enjoyed the plot, the main characters, and I was surprised by the ending. It is YA so there’s no outright spice, but I thought the tension between characters was done well. I do wish we got more focus on the world and the island though, while I found what was happening interesting, I found myself wanting more explanations on a few things. But overall I thought It was a descent YA fantasy and I plan on reading the next book.
As far as the popular criticisms I did see them come up & agree with some..
There are a few places where the writing was spotty (a couple descriptions using the word “thingy” & some sentence structures could’ve been better) but that was mostly just in the first couple of chapters and then I didn’t feel like I noticed much.
Overall I felt the writing was easy to understand and was not bad writing by any means and on par with other YA fantasy books. The way people had been talking about the writing, I was expecting waaaay worse.
I do wish the names for the places and people were a little more creative than “Sunlings,” Moonlings,” “Skylings”, etc but that wasn’t a deal breaker for me.
At the end of the day I enjoyed it for what it was and tried to not hold it to what I thought it should be or what I had seen on other reviews. Unfortunately it’s hard to do that completely with all of the discourse about this book, but I felt it was enjoyable and a descent YA fantasy book. If you liked ACOTAR or TOG I think there’s a good chance you would enjoy this.
As far as the popular criticisms I did see them come up & agree with some..
There are a few places where the writing was spotty (a couple descriptions using the word “thingy” & some sentence structures could’ve been better) but that was mostly just in the first couple of chapters and then I didn’t feel like I noticed much.
Overall I felt the writing was easy to understand and was not bad writing by any means and on par with other YA fantasy books. The way people had been talking about the writing, I was expecting waaaay worse.
I do wish the names for the places and people were a little more creative than “Sunlings,” Moonlings,” “Skylings”, etc but that wasn’t a deal breaker for me.
At the end of the day I enjoyed it for what it was and tried to not hold it to what I thought it should be or what I had seen on other reviews. Unfortunately it’s hard to do that completely with all of the discourse about this book, but I felt it was enjoyable and a descent YA fantasy book. If you liked ACOTAR or TOG I think there’s a good chance you would enjoy this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood
Moderate: Death, Death of parent, and Violence