Cursed

To me, Cursed is one of those easy books you read when you want to waste your time waiting for the newest book in a series to come out or if your just in a general reading slump.

It kept me captivated and wanting to find out what if going to happen with Nimue and the other characters, but the book still left me frustrated with certain things.

1) the characters are kind of just there? I feel like I barely know anything about the characters, which is especially disappointing when it comes to the main characters. Almost nobodies background gets explored, which left me uninterested in most.

2) What was the point of the romance between Nimue and Arthur. The romance also felt like it came out of nowhere. Nimue sees Arthur for the first time and recognizes he's cute (and he kind of acknowledges her back), but then when they “team up” Nimue, understandably, shows not much interest. But suddenly Morgan comes out of nowhere saying that the two “make a great pair” or something along the lines and boom, we are made aware of Nimue's interest in Arthur again, totally out of the blue. Few chapters later the two kiss and their relationship barely gets explored after. The romance feels useless and unnecessary. If you're going to have characters get involved, do it so it feel genuine and not just shoehorned in to check of some list.

Overall, I just can't say much of the book. The ending did leave me curious, but I most definitely wouldn't recommend this to a friend or family member. Maybe watch the Netflix show? It might be better?

So unlike several of the other reviews I glanced at, I actually was excited about it being a story about Nimue. That is in the sense that I did not want an “imagine if Arthur was a girl!” story, because simply, he wasn't. I'm all for a female lead-reimagining I just don't think making it a woman-Arthur is what I'd be looking for.

Throughout reading this I thought it was great for the most part throughout the first 300+ pages, even stating that it was a 4 or 5* book depending on the ending.
Where it lost me is that it is an incredibly long YA book for its style, however they did not specify that it was the beginning of a series? A new saga? I still don't think there's word on another book?
So that means it was always meant to land on some kind of cliffhanger, and I am not opposed to series whatsoever, but if they had lead with that information it could prepare readers for it in terms of expectations. Therefore, for me, a 403 page book that has very little resolution or payoff, is kind of just ridiculous. It missed all the marks for me because of it...

Also at several points in the book I was surprised by how the artwork imagined a somewhat womanly figure for this 14 year old? In a bad way... kind of creepy.

Otherwise the surprise appearances from well known knights of the round table was handled very well and I enjoyed them all.