DNFed at 40% (188 pages). I just...couldn't go on. Life is too short to read books that I didn't give a damn about from page one. *insert upside down smiling emoji*

Let me tell you the difference between books that I give one star ratings versus two star ratings. One star books have nothing redeemable about them. Either they're so hopelessly boring that I can't bear to bring myself to finish them, or they're insanely problematic. Generally I never finish them. A two star book tends to keep my attention in SOME miniscule way, and usually isn't problematic. These are typically books I've finished, but the payoff was so low that it wasn't worth finishing them.

So with that being said, The Sisters of the Winter Wood was not problematic, but it went beyond just being a letdown. Absolutely nothing kept me interested in reading, and I would have put myself another reading slump if I kept going with it. If nothing has appealed to me yet and I'm already 188 pages in, then I clearly can't expect anything to interest me in the remaining 241 pages. Nothing that'll make it worth reading, that could make me give this book anything above two stars.

I started this book July 16th, read about the first hundred pages or so in two days, and then, because I decided to read two books at once, found myself completely neglecting this book in favor of the other. That was the first sign. I don't usually read two books at once, and the less interesting of the two is the first one to get neglected. It wasn't until I finished that other book that I returned to this one. And each time I opened it, I'd groan inwardly. Nothing made me want to open that book back up and finish it. That was sign number two. But I told myself to keep trying, at least for a bit more. That should have been the third sign. This book has mixed reviews, but I'd been told by others that it picks up. I thought I'd give it a bit more of a chance, albeit a half-hearted one. But after another hour of reading, I decided to put it down. For good.

Let me just say, it should be a criminal offense to give a book such a gorgeous cover when the inside pages are significantly lacking any kind of beauty themselves. I'll be sad to let go of this book, but I don't need to be keeping books I didn't like just because I think the cover is beautiful. Anyway, with that out of the way, let's talk about the reasons why I'm giving this book one star, and why I'm not going to finish it.

My two biggest complaints come from the writing style and the characters. Almost 200 pages into the book, and I still didn't feel like I knew ANYTHING about our two main characters, Laya and Liba, except that Laya is "beautiful," Liba is "ugly," Laya is a swan, and Liba is a bear. And for Liba acting like she is better than everyone else for sticking to the rules and expectations her community and lifestyle has put on her, she is certainly just as reckless and annoying as her sister. They both got on my nerves, and they both lacked maturity. I get that Laya is only fifteen, and I think Liba is around eighteen or so, but their problems could have been solved with just a little more communication. But instead, we had both characters repeatedly telling us that they weren't going to tell the other sister about what they knew. To "protect" them. Yeah...protection. Okay. Tell me how THAT is going to protect them. Anyway...

Unfortunately, because of this, I didn't care what happened to either sister. I felt no connection to either. They both lacked depth, and came across as flat and one-dimensional. This is made worse by the fact that the story is told in dual perspectives. That means we should have seen both character's perspectives and gotten to know them well as individuals, right? Wrong. So let's pause on the lack of character development and focus on this for a minute. Liba's chapters are rather ordinary. Basic prose that felt very stilted, repetitive, and didn't give too much away. It lacked a voice. Then we had Laya's chapters, which was meant to be told in "poetry." This was an initial point of intrigue for me, until I actually started reading it and realized it wasn't very good poetry. There was no fluidity. This, too, read very stilted. If I thought I was getting very little out of Liba's chapters, I was getting even less from Laya's. It's a unique concept, but it was executed poorly. As such, nothing - save for superficial details, names, and dialogue choices - distinguished one voice from another.

Now back to the characters. I get that I only made it 40% of the way into the story, but even if these characters somehow evolve and grow, I find myself not caring either way. Their story doesn't interest me and they gave me nothing to root for. And this went beyond Laya and Liba. Apart from differing names, none of the side/supporting characters had a voice. So they all sounded very much the same and also gave me very little to latch on to in terms of interest. They were merely a collection of archetypes with nothing to set them apart.

Now let's talk FEELINGS. The way it's written, clearly Laya and Liba are going through a lot. They're feeling SO MANY THINGS. But...we never see them feeling anything. We're simply told about it. The dialogue and supporting narration was all very basic, leaving little room for me to actually get a feel for why the characters were experiencing certain emotions. It was all very lacking and superficial. It made it hard to believe any of those emotions and reactions were real because there wasn't enough substance to make it believable.

And then we have the fact that this is supposed to be an adult book, but it reads like a fantasy YA romance. I don't care to read about teenagers typically, so I wasn't too thrilled about that when I discovered how old our protagonists were. And while their ways of thinking are rather accurate for people of their age, that didn't take away from how annoying it was. And because of that, the book was beginning to feel more like a love story, with an emphasis on Laya's infatuation with the immensely creepy Fedir, and Liba's ridiculous uncertainty regarding her feelings for Dovid. The rest of the story seemed like it was taking a backseat in favor of fixating too severely on these threads. It's insta-love, plain and simple, and for an adult book, this played on a lot of YA themes and tropes. Not only that, but again, going back to the lack of depth, none of these potential romantic threads, whether they be healthy or not, were believable. It felt forced. I know Laya is young so any ounce of passion she feels is magnified tenfold, especially when she's grown up being told these things are not becoming of her. But it's insta-love plain and simple. And Fedir was a creep. And I didn't care. At all. For any of it. And Liba thinking she's better than Laya for not acting on her impulses...when her emotions for Dovid made hardly any sense either... Nope.

I can't bring myself to review this book anymore. I don't think there's anything else I can add anyway. I just...didn't like this one. And writing the review made it even more obvious to me that I didn't. And that it's not worth continuing.

One star.