I struggled with this one… I really liked As You Wish and was very excited about this one. The blurb caught my eye straight away, and the beginning of the book held great promise. But I just didn’t fall for the story…
I loved that it quite literally started with a bang. I really liked the relationship between the brothers, and although Ishmael got on my nerves quickly, he was a great contrast to Gideon, whom I liked from the start. I found the boys’ interpersonal relationships with their friends and peers – and Owen and Cass in particular – to be believable and feel well developed.
After the initial roaring start, it felt like things were dragging on. Ishmael would do something , Gideon wouldn’t like it, a new piece of the story would get crafted around that dislike. Leather, rinse, repeat. It started feeling draggy much earlier than I expected. I found the multi-format writing distracting – but that is a thing I often have trouble with, so this maybe on me more than the book, but I found that it felt disjointed rather than cohesive. And like so many other readers, I found the footnotes that were all over the place and the place holders for what I presume will be visuals distracting – I do know that this is an uncorrected review copy, but if a significant portion of the book is visuals that aren’t included in that review copy, it’s difficult to evaluate it in its entirety…
I think this one just was not for me – or at least not for me in an unfinished copy.
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