a story like no other

a fantasy world a new.
old stories and the world building is brilliant.
cannot wait for what is next in the series!

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Should have been edited more

It seems like the unedited copy has been released by accident. Good story within unnecessary similar chapters, which make up half of the book. Everything happens in the last 4 hours and there is not enough going on before that. Overuse of the same words within minutes from each other. Verdant, lurch/lurching, reverberate, eyes narrowed, dart/darted and there are more.

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For the Wolf

As an avid reader over time I’ve added to a list of auto buy authors, and with my love for audiobooks I now have a list of auto buy narrators and Inés del Castillo is now one of them. I had to remind myself multiple times that this is read by one person, it’s extremely well read.

The story itself was a very slow build into the plot. As it got to the end, the race against time wasn’t just for one character to save another but for many people trying to get to the end they wanted.

I am looking forward to reading the next one to see where it takes everyone, especially after that epilogue.

Quotes I adored:
“Sometimes you don't mourn people so much as you mourn who they could've been.”

“People with power resent losing it, and too much power for too long a time can make a villain of anyone.”

“Red spent the time mostly in her room, surrounded by her books, letting the familiar passages be an escape. She was good at escaping.”

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More than a fairytale retelling

This wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was still very good! The characters were interesting and the premise was much more than a fairytale retelling - A lot of beautiful writing in this story, and a very clever magical system.

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cliché

the story is cliché and under-developed, the characters flat, boring overall , would not recommend

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Good idea, but failed on execution

Kudos to the reader, it was a nicely done performance.

Really didn't care much for this book though. It seems like there was more story in the interludes than there was in the "main" part, and Neve was more of a heroine than Red could ever dream of being.

There were a whole bunch of things that didn't quite make sense to me such as Eamon swearing "Kings" which didn't really have its place seeing they were just a bunch of random people to him, not actual gods. The desperate need of the people (as a whole) in the forest city to escape also didn't have its place because they had more than everything they needed to not just survive but actually thrive.

Overall, to me it felt like the author had a good idea, but failed to deliver. It would have been interesting to see Red learn to exist, to not have to consider the expiration date on her life, and maybe to see some real relationship grow between her and the Wolf. As it was, it felt very forced.

Dunno. Maybe it's just me, but this one feels like a flop.

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Mediocre at best

The whole story was as cliche as it could be.

First and foremost, this is a Beauty and the Beast retelling, not a Little Red Riding Hood as the cover, title and synopsis might lead you to believe. I, for one, think we already have more than enough retellings of Beauty and the Beast, so it is extremely difficult to create a story based on that fairy-tale that stands out in a good way. For me, misleading readers as to what the story is going to be is just poor choice on the author's part and harms the story more than it does any good.

Disregarding that, the story is bland - we have a princess, bearing the very original name Red (we're continuing with the Red Riding Hood allusions) who has been overlooked by her mother her whole life because she will be sacrificed to the Wolf, a mythical figure residing in the nearby forest and keeping the monsters in it at bay. Red has a sister, called Neverah (nevera means fridge in Spanish, which I simply couldn't get out of my head every time her name was mentioned) with whom she's really close. On her dunnowhich birthday Red is sent to the forest to be sacrificed to the Wolf so an ancient bargain can be uphold. From then on we have all of the following:

* an attempt at creating a creepy atmosphere in the forest, which didn't really work. That was quite unfortunate, because if it had worked, then this might have been something original and intriguing in the story. As it is, the mediocre writing didn't really succeed in creating the atmosphere the author clearly intended;
* an insta-lovey relationship with a romantic interest, whose whole personality could be described by the words tortured and self-sacrificing. He had absolutely no other defining characteristics beyond that.
* mediocre to non-existent character development;
* bland heroine, who managed to invoke absolutely no interest or sympathy in me;
* evil masterminds, whose motivation was simply being evil.


I couldn't wait for this book to end.

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3 people found this helpful