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enigmaticreader's Reviews (300)
What a charming and lovely book! A nice and light read with a minor who-done-it. Gabrielle Zevin has done her homework when picking the stories she summarizes and has done a great job of doing so from the voice of the protagonist. While the story is well written, I never felt truly attached to any of the characters. Everything was very light and I never felt like anything was truly very serious. None of the "bad" characters are ever truly bad beyond a few poor character traits like selfishness or vanity. The plot is well developed if not slightly easy to predict and the characters interactions are all necessary and well written. All in all it's a very good book and I enjoyed following A.J. on his journey.
So, the plot and story are amazing and SJM does a great job of using multiple points of view to get the story across. She's created a layered and multifaceted story that has many ways of keeping one interested. However, it takes so long to get into it. The first half, if not three quarters of the book, feels mostly like set up and it feels like Aelin gets lucky... a lot. SJM gets stuck using a lot of the same descriptive words which can take away from the intensity of the situation she's painting. That being said she does a masterful job overall of continuing Aelin's story. It was great watching as Aelin becomes a clever queen, Manon becomes understanding of her feelings, and more than a few characters gain strength in various forms.
