ARC Review: Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor

Title: Into the Dim (Into the Dim #1)
Author: Janet B. Taylor
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Publication date: March 1st 2016
Buy the book: Amazon / Barnes and Noble



When fragile, sixteen-year-old Hope Walton loses her mom to an earthquake overseas, her secluded world crumbles. Agreeing to spend the summer in Scotland, Hope discovers that her mother was more than a brilliant academic, but also a member of a secret society of time travelers. Trapped in the twelfth century in the age of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hope has seventy-two hours to rescue her mother and get back to their own time. Along the way, her path collides with that of a mysterious boy who could be vital to her mission . . . or the key to Hope’s undoing.

(Image and summary taken from Goodreads)

My thoughts:

Oh my god. This book...

This book was so boring it took me weeks to finish it. I'm sure you're wondering why I didn't just DNF it, well, it's because I don't DNF books. Even if it's boring or has terrible writing, I just go with it because to me, I'm respecting the author by finishing it. I don't regret reading the whole thing but the plot confused me, the writing was unimpressive and the pace was so. Damn. Slow.

When I first read the blurb of Into the Dim, I thought it sounded exciting and all kinds of adventurous, especially since a number of 2016 debut authors were raving about it. And before I delved into the book, a close friend of mine told me how much she loved it, so that added to my excitement even more (plus it was compared to Outlander so that added more clout to it, in a way). So when I finally cracked open my copy and flipped through the first few chapters, this was literally me:

I thought that Hope, the main character, would be super interesting because 1) she had an eidetic memory 2) her mom is a time traveler and 3) she'd be moving to Scotland to learn all sorts of secrets, but nooooope. All I was met with was a flat, judgey MC who stereotyped people and had the oddest voice in my head. To say that I didn't click with Hope would be an understatement, her character was just too underdeveloped and I could not see myself wanting to get to know her, even as the novel progressed. But honestly, it was not just Hope who fell flat in terms of characterisation, it was most, if not all, the people in Into the Dim. Her love interest, Bran, was charming but it was hard to like him because all you would get from him are vague details of who he is. And Aunt Lucinda and her crew of time travellers? Yup, definitely not interested in getting to know them, majority of them were super sketchy and just hard to believe. The only one I kind of liked was Doug but Janet B. Taylor seemed to really not take her time when it comes to building up and fleshing out her characters. There was not enough of their person to like and connect with.

In terms of the time travelling aspect of Into the Dim, I will commend Janet B. Taylor for the flush of information. I am not too sure if the info fed to me was accurate but I went with them anyway because the explanations sounded intelligent and legit. (There were explanations about Tesla, Sources and a bunch of other jargon made for physicists and scientists.) However, I was disappointed that the book only revolved around the idea of saving Hope's mom from the sixteenth century and retrieving the Nonius Stone which, coincidentally, also happened to be in that same time frame. There were no other exciting time jumps, and that just showed how limited the scope of Into the Dim's plot was.

Into the Dim was obviously disappointing to me, it had so much potential to be great but the whole thing was flat and had no personality. The details were amazing though, the way Janet B. Taylor described the different sceneries and places was great but one can't rely on great descriptions to carry a book. I was surprised to find out that Into the Dim will have a sequel because I thought the ending was okay, but I know that I definitely won't read it because I don't think I can stomach another dragging book that leads to nowhere.

Rating:

.5

ARC Review: Black Widow: Forever Red by Margaret Stohl

Title: Black Widow: Forever Red (Black Widow #1)

Author: Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Marvel Press

Publication date: October 13th 2015

Buy the book: Amazon / Barnes and Noble

Enter the world of the Avengers’ iconic master spy…

Natasha Romanoff is one of the world’s most lethal assassins. Trained from a young age in the arts of death and deception, Natasha was given the title of Black Widow by Ivan Somodorov, her brutal teacher at the Red Room, Moscow’s infamous academy for operatives.

Ava Orlova is just trying to fit in as an average Brooklyn teenager, but her life has been anything but average.The daughter of a missing Russian quantum physicist, Ava was once subjected to a series of ruthless military experiments—until she was rescued by Black Widow and placed under S.H.I.E.L.D. protection. Ava has always longed to reconnect with her mysterious savior, but Black Widow isn’t really the big sister type.

Until now.

When children all over Eastern Europe begin to go missing, and rumors of smuggled Red Room tech light up the dark net, Natasha suspects her old teacher has returned—and that Ava Orlova might be the only one who can stop him. To defeat the madman who threatens their future, Natasha and Ava must unravel their pasts. Only then will they discover the truth about the dark-eyed boy with an hourglass tattoo who haunts Ava’s dreams…

Black Widow: Forever Red features all the heart-pounding adventure readers expect from Marvel, written by #1 New York Times best-selling author Margaret Stohl. Uncover a new side of the Marvel Universe that will thrill loyal fans and newcomers alike, as Stohl reveals the untold story of Black Widow for the very first time.

(Image and summary taken from Goodreads)

My thoughts:

When I found out that Margaret Stohl would be writing a YA novel about the Black Widow, I was really apprehensive about it. I wasn't a fan of her Beautiful Creatures series (the books were dull and boring, in my opinion) and Icons series (I read the first one and it was just a confused mess). I didn't want to set my expectations too high but dammit, I really wanted a badass superhero book worthy of the Black Widow and her awesomeness. Unfortunately, that wasn't what I got...

The story mainly focused on Ava Orlov and her insta-love (yes, insta-love) interest, Alex Manor and their shenanigans without the Black Widow when all I wanted was the Black freaking Widow. I would have been totally fine without the romance aspect in the novel because it would have left extra room for the more exciting bits to be developed; and the romance wasn't even done well. One look then BOOM love, love, love. (Even Natasha Romanov noted how quickly their relationship progressed.)

The characters in Black Widow: Forever Red had zero personalities. Majority of the characters were so stiff and the dialogues felt forced. I couldn't enjoy their quips and comebacks without pausing to see if it was meant to be a joke or not, the aura was just so serious. I felt that if Margaret Stohl wanted the book to be serious, she should have stayed consistent and not forced the humour. However, I will give .5 for Agent Coulson because even though his interactions with Natasha were awkward at best, he did make comments that made me smile; and I will give another .5 for Tony Stark because even though Margaret Stohl didn't capture Stark's dry humour and natural snark, she did try and it was an okay effort.

If you expect for there to be some heinous villain in this novel, you will be sorely disappointed. About 90% of this book revolves around Ava and Alex, another 5% dedicated to Natasha and the last 5% to Ian Somodorov (the guy they're suppose to go against). It was like Margaret Stohl forgot what her own story was about, got sidetracked and then saw a random Post-it on her desk that said "main characters must beat up Ian Somodorov" leading her back to the initial plot but went "eh" and decided to keep what she'd already written even though they were just filler chapters. Whatever fight scenes this book had lacked excitement and that made it so hard for me to enjoy them. Everything just felt so boring for me. I will give another .5 to this novel because Margaret Stohl did her research well (at least it seemed that way), this book was filled with so much scientific jargon that I just decided to believe whatever the heck it said (quantum entanglement? Okay).

All in all, this book was no good for me. This is the third strike for Margaret Stohl and I definitely won't be reading any of her future books.

Rating:

.5

Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication date: May 13th 2014
Buy the book: Amazon / Barnes and Noble



A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.

Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

(Image and summary taken from Goodreads.)

Review:

This book told me to lie but I am going to be honest with you and tell you how much I disliked We Were Liars. Which is a huge disappointment for me because I have been an E. Lockhart fan for a really long time, her Ruby Oliver series was pretty much my teenage Bible. But no matter how much I liked E. Lockhart's other books, I could not muster up even the slightest bit of like for this book and I did not even bother trying to. Everything was just wrong.

A lot of people will tell you how absolutely amazing this book is or how completely genius it is but all I felt while reading it was irritation, frustration, confusion and a constant feeling of self-hatred because I was forcing myself to finish reading it (unfortunately, I never DNF books). The hype for We Were Liars is incredible and when you look at the book in bits and pieces, it works but as a whole, it felt like E. Lockhart took a bunch of random things that should never go together and threw them all together and hoped that she got enough pieces right to make a bestseller. There was a obvious disconnect between the prose, the characters, the plot and the whole "Liars" business.

About ninety-nine percent

of

the book

was written like

this

and oh my god,

I did not

understand why

why

why are you

so damn

pretentious,

Cadence?

If anyone tried to speak to me like that, I would most definitely smack them in the face for being so pretentious and annoying. Can you imagine around 200-plus pages of this kind of narration? The book was filled with these kinds of streams of thoughts and I wondered what the use was, the way Cady narrated the story did not even have a significance to the story. It felt like a cliché oh I'm a damaged protagonist so let me speak in a "lyrical" but actually annoying way to add more mystery to myself. Too much purple prose for me, sorry (I'm not sorry). It was really tiring reading that. The only reason I managed to last to the very end was because of the "insanely crazy/amazing/genius plot twist" everybody was talking about. I barely held on.

I was also really confused as to why they were called "Liars" in the first place. There was no explanation or even a small hint as to why they called themselves that. E. Lockhart mentioned in an interview that she wanted to create a name for them that would solidify and connect the four teens as a group but I never saw that or even understood it. The cousins and Gat literally just spent the summer together and that's it. (Also, lots of teen girl angst about whether he likes me or not.)

And now for the controversial twist. I am going to be honest and say that I never expected it. Nor did I appreciate it when all was finally revealed. The reason I did not see it coming was because of the obvious disconnect between the narrative to the twist itself. There was a certain flow the story was following, it was smooth albeit really boring but the stream was there and then E. Lockhart suddenly hits you with this insanely random twist which just felt out of place. It felt like E. Lockhart knew that her book was boring so she decided to look for and use a last-ditch twist to save her book. I was left unimpressed and really disappointed. And I have a question, was Cady pretentious even before the twist or was that an effect on her?

Reading We Were Liars was a learning experience for me: one, that not all books that will mind fuck you are good reads and two, my tolerance for pretentiousness is not as high as I thought it was. Even though I really did not enjoy We Were Liars, I feel like there is still a big audience that will like it so I recommend that readers still try it out to see for themselves.

Rating:

.5