Under the Oak Tree: Volume 1

Rating Description:

1.0 - DNF/Despise

1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had

2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring

2.5 - Alright with lots of notes

3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it

3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it

4.0 - Love but with notes

4.5 - Love it so much I want to highlight the book but still with notes

5.0 - Love it so much I want to highlight the book and notes are very positive

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I have been stressed these past 2 months so I picked this as one of the last things to read this year because I needed something easy to read.

It might seem weird that I rated this higher than some books that were objectively better. But it’s about expectations.

From the summary of this book and the reviews I’ve read, I knew that this wasn’t something deep and meaningful. I have been forewarned on the problematic scenes scattered in the story. I also went into this without expecting a lot of character development or world building.

This was supposed to be a fairly run of the mill fantasy. It will have some monster fighting. It will have “spicy” scenes (some of which are questionable by today’s moral standards).

So given those, I can say that my expectations were met. There were no surprises. There were no unexpected disappointments. What edged this to a 2.5 instead of a 2.0 was because it didn’t have any weird and annoying contradictory actions from the characters (cough – Of Jade and Dragons – cough).

Would I recommend this to others? Probably not especially if I don’t know them well. I also won’t recommend this to the younger audience. However, this does fit a certain niche of interest and I don’t see a problem with reading this book or books of the same ilk. I mean, we don’t always have to read award winning books. As I said to the girl who rang this book up for me in Coles: We don’t always have to eat vegetables. It’s ok to eat some junk food. And this the equivalent of junk food in the literary world.