I enjoyed the very real idea presented about history being stolen, fighting to find out the truth about where you come from, and accessing knowledge tI enjoyed the very real idea presented about history being stolen, fighting to find out the truth about where you come from, and accessing knowledge that has been hidden. This story had a lot of potential with that set-up, but it was a mess.
There is no chemistry between Lore and either of the two potential love interests. The pace moved extraordinarily fast, and we had no time to sit with our main character and really understand her developing feelings. There was a certain *reveal* with one of the men, and an enemies-to-lovers dynamic with the other, both of which could have been far more impactful had the author committed and let certain events play out to meet their full dramatic potential.
Speaking of pace, I found there to be way too much foreshadowing and then subsequent reflection. The book spent pages and pages setting up a scene and explaining to us the stakes involved of Lore completing a certain task, and then once the task was completed, pages and pages more of Lore considering what just happened and replaying it for us. There had to have been 5-6 very low impact scenes like this.
But then during what should have been big moments of discovery, the book would go "And Lore just had a sense of knowing that this was the right answer." and then suddenly it's "TWO WEEKS LATER..." as if those scenes weren't drastically altering the direction of the plot.
I don't think this book perfectly balanced its tone. To me, it felt like it wanted to be cozy fantasy for so much of it; Lore getting brought into this potentially dangerous situation, but getting unexpectedly welcomed in with new clothes and money and delicious food we read her endlessly moaning over. But then there were gruesome discoveries, descriptive deaths, and extreme betrayal...it just went so far in the other direction that it felt tonally confused. Throw in a strangely placed sex scene and I was officially lost. I don't think it's impossible to have both soft and intense vibes present in the same book, but because it jumped between them so quickly and didn't spend much time in the middle, the intended reader takeaway and impression was indeterminable.
I might read the sequel just to see how this duology might redeem itself....more
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