The Bear and the Nightingale

This took me incredibly long for such a short little book and not for the good reasons...

Out in a Russian forest the local leader's daughter is a bit different. She just seems to be magical, always a bit wild. When she gets a mad stepmother who shuns the honouring of the local supernatural, things just go wrong and the girl, Vasya needs to persevere as the only person who keeps them safe through keeping the traditions.

Russia is a setting that just attracts me. Never been to the country, don't speak the language, I've never had a mysterious, passionate lover from Russia, but the whole aesthetic is just my thing. I love it. Not gonna lie, that was the reason why I really wanted to read this book and nothing could stop me, not even the doubt of it not being so brilliant at the end.
Spoiler alert (in case you are not seeing my rating), it actually wasn't brilliant to me.
Part of it is not using the creatures too much. Seriously, when someone dips into lore so rich, so interesting and great, then they SHOULD actually use it all properly, instead of bringing it a bit in, then kind of... not developing on any of it at all.
We get no explanation about anything. Why is Vasya (and her dead mother) so magical? What's the point?? There was a conflict with the creatures and it is still all so vague. Something so underdeveloped makes me feel like the author didn't really know what to do with all the cool things, they just sounded nice and she threw them together.

My another big bunch of issues with it is the whole fairytale aspect. Not the fact it is there, I love stories like that, I adore the whimsical feel and the wonder, but the style has its drawbacks.
One I find here is that while you can suspend your disbelief and just roll with certain thing in a streamlined little story, those things kick you in the teeth in hundreds of pages of stuff. Characters acting ridiculous, tropes, all those things get more annoying if the story is longer, because there is no reason to just leave them like that. There is room to work with stuff!!!
Another here was the writing. I am going to be nitpicky when the style is supposed to be something like this. If you are so careful, then be that properly. Stop using ‘milling' and ‘vaulting' a million times, please!!!!!!! This is becoming something that annoys me so much, the uncaring writing. It's not that hard to avoid it. Even in just a text editor you can search for a certain word.

This connects to the fairytale aspects as well; characters. Those characters are simply written for a reason, they are limited by the genre and it makes sense. If you want to send a clear message to kids listening to you, then it makes sense to simplify. But here we got a way too “amazing” and infallibly perfect protagonist and nothing at all in case of the others. Not even the supernaturals, even thought they could have been something interesting.
I also dislike the obvious disdain for normal people. The main character's older sister is normal. She marries and after that nobody gives a shit about her even existing. Same goes to one of the older brothers. It's such a juvenile way of thinking; you are nothing if you are not irresponsible and wild. Being normal means you are nothing and you might as well just disappear. I have no issue with the protagonist thinking this, but here she is being sold as the perfect mindset, as someone who is always right.

Disappointment, honestly. I really need something that I can enjoy a lot now, because I seem to be in a mood of picking up books I end up not liking at all. I don't know what's happening.

Good night and pass me the vodka.