A review by sephiefoxx
Faebound by Saara El-Arifi

adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

“You are the fire of my heart, and the beat of
my drum. I am yours under moonlight. Until the rhythm sings no more.”

This is a difficult book to review, because while there were things going for it - namely the characters and the world-building - I found what remained underwhelming at best. 

As I said, there are parts of this book that do work. I really enjoyed the cast of characters and I found the worldbuilding, lore, and magic quite interesting. Unfortunately, that was overshadowed by all the things I found frustrating. 

This is a very predictable book. Which is fine, not ever tale needs to be a perfect maze of twist and turns with perfectly laid surprises and foreshadowing. But this was ridiculous, mainly because everything felt so glaringly obvious, and yet none of the supposedly intelligent characters seemed to be able to rub two brain cells together to link the simplest of threads. Clues and information were laid out repeatedly, almost as if there was a neon sign pointing to the answers the characters sought - and instead, they wandered past the point until someone explicitly told them the answer. 

My next issue comes to roost in the writing. Something about it felt clunky, awkward almost. While some paragraphs or dialogues elicited a chuckle or a smile, for the most part the writing felt disjointed. 

Which brings us to my third and final major issue- the romances storylines. The pacing felt weird. With both couples falling into insta-something (maybe love, maybe lust, maybe a secret third thing that's much worse) but then proceeding to dance around it in a confusing, misguided, miscommunicated mess that was suddenly overcome by a random change of heart. I do not know what changed Furi's tune. I am still confused over Yeeran's entire thought process. Lettle's realisation and change of heart was the worst of them all. And poor Rayan doesn't really know what happened and how he got to this point. Same, dude. Same. 

All in all, there was potential, and some truly interesting elements of this book. But, there were also some major flaws. While the characters were interesting in theory, the plot forced them into a state of mind-numbing ignorance to attempt various plot twists that could be seen a mile away. The worldbuilding and lore was fascinating, but the writing itself didn't feel like it could live up to the standard it set. And the romantic pacing was just odd. I really don't know what else to say other than this was a rather strange reading and reviewing experience all round.
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