House of Ash and Shadow

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. (via Netgalley)

I liked the idea of this book but it felt like it's geared towards the younger part of YA. The mix of modern slang words mixed in with ye old speech patterns was kind of off putting. Not a ton of world or character building either. Ending felt kind of rushed too since suddenly a lot was happening.

well. i've been having some shit luck with some of my reading choices lately.

lemme be honest: the writing wasn't great, it was pretty juvenile and bland at best. everything felt like it was happening too easily and too fast, and at points i felt like this would've been better off marketed as a middle-grade. all of the characters are extremely emotionally immature, especially fallon. the story wasn't the most original either, it's basically like a reverse shatter me with fae, and the names for all the people and places were a bit convenient or ordinary. also, i couldn't tell if this was high fantasy or urban/dystopian fantasy? it seemed like high fantasy but the characters used a lot of modern colloquialisms and phrases that had me doubtful (‘dude' ‘pizza' ‘bro' ‘bestie' etc). however. i did have fun reading this. overall this was a pretty mediocre but entertaining book. still gonna read the next one for funsies probably.

tl;dr this gets to go into the category of books that were objectively horrid but i still had fun and somewhat enjoyed them, along with the selection, american royals, and house of marionne.

Edit: ok. so. after taking some time to Think, i've concluded that this book was not as enjoyable as i originally thought tbh. there are books where the writing is bad but you're staying interested because of the plot, characters, pacing etc, and there are books where the writing is so bad that you're finding any way to force yourself into finishing it. i had gotten to a point where i was deluding myself into thinking this had some kind of redeeming quality when it absolutely did not. sorry to anyone who enjoyed this, but the writing was extremely poorly done.