I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
I loved the premise of this story. It was what made me so excited to picked this book up in the first place. I haven't seen a ton of racial diversity in mysteries, so it was nice to see that this was what appears to be an #ownvoices book, as the girl who was murdered is from Jordan and the author is Jordanian-American.
The story itself was interesting. I was engaged from the first page of the story. The main thing that bothered me was that this book definitely needs a good edit. There were multiple mistakes that would be remedied with a good edit, from punctuation to some minor grammatical errors.
I did like that, during the first part of the book, it was all from Siwar's point of view as she tried to navigate things in the body of a three year old boy. You caught the tiniest of glimpses of what went through her mind whenever the diaper had to be changed on Wyatt's body and how she dealt with having a penis all of a sudden when she hadn't had much interaction with one in her own life prior to her murder. You could also see the struggle of having to learn out to navigate this three year old body when her 25 year old self says, "I know how to do this!" Especially since at the age of three, Wyatt is speech delayed and she can't use his voice to explain what had happened to her.
During part two, the voices of Wyatt and Siwar were just different enough to be noticeable. There were parts that felt like that they were on the similar side. But after cohabiting in someone else's mind, I can easily forgive that part. Even with living with someone for that long, you tend to pick up at least one habit of the other person. And since Siwar had nothing but her consciousness, I could easily get past that.
Towards the end, there was a conversation that Wyatt had with his friend Adam over the phone that felt a bit forced. The things that were said didn't quite flow naturally. I cringed a bit reading that specific bit of the story.
When we got to the end of the story where we find out who actually committed the murder, I was hoping that it wouldn't be a cop out. The story took a bit of a turn before we found out and, for the most part, I wasn't super surprised at who the murderer was. It did, however, make sense that the murderer was who it was.
Rating: Ignoring the punctuation mistakes: 3.5/5 stars Not ignoring the punctuation mistakes: 2.75/5 stars
Monday, January 28, 2019
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
The Steampunk Chronicles Series Review *Some Spoilers*
Yesterday, I finished reading The Steampunk Chronicles by Kady Cross, which consists of the four main books:
The Girl in the Steel Corset
The Girl in the Clockwork Collar
The Girl with the Iron Touch
The Girl with the Wind Up Heart
And there are three novellas as well:
The Strange Case of Finley Jayne (Prequel)
The Dark Discovery of Jack Dandy*(2.5)
The Wild Adventures of Jasper Renn (3.5)
*I didn't actually read this one. My library doesn't have this one on the shelves or through Overdrive. As Jack Dandy literally tells you what happens, I don't feel the need to track down this one. And I have no desire to purchase this one outright due to my feelings for the series as a whole.I have read everything else, though.
The three novellas weren't really necessary for the books themselves. With The Strange Case of Finley Jayne, there were a few things that didn't add up with the rest of the books. In this, she appears to have control over the dark side that she has. However, once you start reading The Girl in the Steel Corset, Finley states that she has no control over this darker side.
The Wild Adventures of Jasper Renn really didn't add much to the series. It just explained where Jasper was during part of The Girl with the Iron Touch. It didn't really feel like it added anything to the series.
Through the course of the first three books of the series itself, we are consistently told how "not normal Finley is." And the word normal was always in quotation marks when we were told how not normal she is. Instead of just showing us how she wasn't normal. we get beaten over the head with being told she is. And then see it. It got old rather quickly and took me out of the books several times. It happens with several of the other characters as well. But we see it predominantly done with Finley.
As well throughout the first three books, we are told that Finley's father died while her mother was pregnant with her. And then, randomly in Wind Up Heart, he died when she was three. He also tells her that he and her mother were invited the Greythorne estate before he passed away and Finley not only knew Griffin but played with him. Sam as well. We do get Griffin and Sam's POV throughout the series and no one bothers mentioning it anywhere prior to this. This either is a continuity error someone missed or ignored for reasons unknown.
The characters were fairly flat and seemed more concerned about how good looking their partner was. Or arguing with each other because they just couldn't come out and say what they wanted to. The majority of their problems could have been resolved just by talking to each other. But if they had done that, these books would have been thinner. I could have done with so much less romance. Since the publisher was Harlequin Teen, it's to be expected. The whole "I like him/her but can't be with him/her because we're of different classes" thing with Griffin and Finley also got old fairly quickly. We got it after the first few times it was mentioned. We got it. There are feelings there. But since Griffin didn't care about what anyone else in society thought about him, why did it matter in regards to Finley? And when they finally started making progress towards their relationship (which we all knew was inevitable), all I could think was that it was about time.
There was way too much convenience. Someone thinks something, someone else says something to them about that same thing they were just thinking about. Finley feels guilty about spending Griffin's money? He tells her not to worry about it "as if reading her mind." Only one person is said to be a telepath in the series, Griffin's aunt Cordelia. And we only see her in Steel Corset. So this much mind reading is a little too convenient.
With Mei in Clockwork Collar, it became pretty apparent that she was working with Dalton fairly early on. And that she hadn't had any kind of feeling toward Jasper. And he was supposed to have been in love with her. But got over her pretty quick once she had died, it seemed, and moved on to Cat as soon as Cat "needed" his help finding her little sister.
The plot of the books is what had drawn me initially to the series. And it fell so short from what it could have been. All sorts of cool things could have been worked into the story and it wasn't. It almost didn't feel fair to call this series a steampunk one.
I rated every book two out of five stars. I wanted so much to like this more than I did. Looking at the reviews on GoodReads, I am apparently of an unpopular opinion since almost everyone else loves this series. Which is fine since not every book is going to be for absolutely everyone.
The Girl in the Steel Corset
The Girl in the Clockwork Collar
The Girl with the Iron Touch
The Girl with the Wind Up Heart
And there are three novellas as well:
The Strange Case of Finley Jayne (Prequel)
The Dark Discovery of Jack Dandy*(2.5)
The Wild Adventures of Jasper Renn (3.5)
*I didn't actually read this one. My library doesn't have this one on the shelves or through Overdrive. As Jack Dandy literally tells you what happens, I don't feel the need to track down this one. And I have no desire to purchase this one outright due to my feelings for the series as a whole.I have read everything else, though.
The three novellas weren't really necessary for the books themselves. With The Strange Case of Finley Jayne, there were a few things that didn't add up with the rest of the books. In this, she appears to have control over the dark side that she has. However, once you start reading The Girl in the Steel Corset, Finley states that she has no control over this darker side.
The Wild Adventures of Jasper Renn really didn't add much to the series. It just explained where Jasper was during part of The Girl with the Iron Touch. It didn't really feel like it added anything to the series.
Through the course of the first three books of the series itself, we are consistently told how "not normal Finley is." And the word normal was always in quotation marks when we were told how not normal she is. Instead of just showing us how she wasn't normal. we get beaten over the head with being told she is. And then see it. It got old rather quickly and took me out of the books several times. It happens with several of the other characters as well. But we see it predominantly done with Finley.
As well throughout the first three books, we are told that Finley's father died while her mother was pregnant with her. And then, randomly in Wind Up Heart, he died when she was three. He also tells her that he and her mother were invited the Greythorne estate before he passed away and Finley not only knew Griffin but played with him. Sam as well. We do get Griffin and Sam's POV throughout the series and no one bothers mentioning it anywhere prior to this. This either is a continuity error someone missed or ignored for reasons unknown.
The characters were fairly flat and seemed more concerned about how good looking their partner was. Or arguing with each other because they just couldn't come out and say what they wanted to. The majority of their problems could have been resolved just by talking to each other. But if they had done that, these books would have been thinner. I could have done with so much less romance. Since the publisher was Harlequin Teen, it's to be expected. The whole "I like him/her but can't be with him/her because we're of different classes" thing with Griffin and Finley also got old fairly quickly. We got it after the first few times it was mentioned. We got it. There are feelings there. But since Griffin didn't care about what anyone else in society thought about him, why did it matter in regards to Finley? And when they finally started making progress towards their relationship (which we all knew was inevitable), all I could think was that it was about time.
There was way too much convenience. Someone thinks something, someone else says something to them about that same thing they were just thinking about. Finley feels guilty about spending Griffin's money? He tells her not to worry about it "as if reading her mind." Only one person is said to be a telepath in the series, Griffin's aunt Cordelia. And we only see her in Steel Corset. So this much mind reading is a little too convenient.
With Mei in Clockwork Collar, it became pretty apparent that she was working with Dalton fairly early on. And that she hadn't had any kind of feeling toward Jasper. And he was supposed to have been in love with her. But got over her pretty quick once she had died, it seemed, and moved on to Cat as soon as Cat "needed" his help finding her little sister.
The plot of the books is what had drawn me initially to the series. And it fell so short from what it could have been. All sorts of cool things could have been worked into the story and it wasn't. It almost didn't feel fair to call this series a steampunk one.
I rated every book two out of five stars. I wanted so much to like this more than I did. Looking at the reviews on GoodReads, I am apparently of an unpopular opinion since almost everyone else loves this series. Which is fine since not every book is going to be for absolutely everyone.
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