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A review by crybabybea
A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
Unbelievably boring and contrived. If I weren't reading this for a challenge I would have DNF'd at 15%.
I'm okay with slow plots but I need SOMETHING to hold me over while the plot progresses, and this had nothing going for it. The writing was juvenile, the characters were dull, the romance was cringey, even the world-building was poorly done. I got extremely tired of reading this after the 4th infodumping story about the world's lore. All of the world-building was done via dialogue, which amounted to pages and pages of wasted time spent talking to people about nothing instead of being IN the world and experiencing things naturally. The main romance between Jack and Adaira is so unnatural, even the way they talk to each other feels stilted and like they are holding each other at arm's length. This may have been better if the book solely focused on Sidra and Torin because their relationship was at least more mature and they had experiences together that made their growth as partners feel realistic and worthwhile.
Also it skips around in POVs between the four main characters (and sometimes the main character's little sister) and there are no breaks between POVs. Wtf? I've never seen that before. A scene will end with a character and then the next line will be in another character's POV without any page break or even a symbol to mark the end of a POV. On top of that, all the POVs sounded exactly the same and no character had a unique voice. Just super clunky and annoying to read.
I'm okay with slow plots but I need SOMETHING to hold me over while the plot progresses, and this had nothing going for it. The writing was juvenile, the characters were dull, the romance was cringey, even the world-building was poorly done. I got extremely tired of reading this after the 4th infodumping story about the world's lore. All of the world-building was done via dialogue, which amounted to pages and pages of wasted time spent talking to people about nothing instead of being IN the world and experiencing things naturally. The main romance between Jack and Adaira is so unnatural, even the way they talk to each other feels stilted and like they are holding each other at arm's length. This may have been better if the book solely focused on Sidra and Torin because their relationship was at least more mature and they had experiences together that made their growth as partners feel realistic and worthwhile.
Also it skips around in POVs between the four main characters (and sometimes the main character's little sister) and there are no breaks between POVs. Wtf? I've never seen that before. A scene will end with a character and then the next line will be in another character's POV without any page break or even a symbol to mark the end of a POV. On top of that, all the POVs sounded exactly the same and no character had a unique voice. Just super clunky and annoying to read.