A review by railway1721
Garron Park by Nordika Night

dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced

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

2.5

 

Because as much as I fucking hate you, Maddox, I fucking like you, too.

Plot: 3/5
Spice: 2/5 (few open door scenes, some more descriptive than others)
Characters: 3/5

Overall reco: This was enjoyable but I kind of struggled through this. The characters spend a LOT of time rehashing events in their heads. Like sometimes I felt like I was in an anime filler episode where they were rehashing everything that happened and how they felt about it. Which.. fine. But it felt like it happened so often. I started skimming these pages, especially as it go later. Like when

Devon gets arrested and

Maddox comes home and no one is around we spend most if not all of that chapter in his head rehashing the events of the last few weeks AGAIN. Him going over and one about how weird it was that he wanted to fight AND fuck Devon. He'd had this conversation in his head several times at this point and I was over it.
The boys felt like they were 16 and not 25. Nate and Xavi felt closer to 21-23. I don't know if the intention was to make it seem like these guys were young because of their circumstances but their actions and behavior just felt way younger.
When I got into this book I was expecting to feel more frustration. These books, youth in situations of poverty where the world is unfair and working hard against them to the point of extreme despair, tend to get me extra hard. They are almost always going to be a good hurt book. And maybe this was and I ruined it by skimming, but it never seemed to really dig in. I expected hard choices and fallout around

Nate and Devon being arrested

but that all worked out far, far to well. I'm sure it'll come back in the second book but I'm not sure I care enough to read that one.
Overall the book felt far too short and far to long? Things that I expected to be issues were not, there was a lot of mental recapping. Enjoyable but I'm not going to read the follow ups.