Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
No one was interesting. I'm more interested in what my neighbour's cat is doing than the characters themselves. Why do the whole thing that it was an asylum and "haunted" when it wasn't relevant to the plot at all. I really don't have a character I'm rooting for and everyone is annoying. The story is so slow and nothing really happened, I'm extremely glad that I have this book done and over with. I gotta say, I LOVED Rupert - he’s the only thing that brought this book up to 3 stars. Not that Rupe is a “thing”, but you know what I mean.
For me it wasn't always clear when you changed povs or it was sudden. It also didn't help that the writing style for every character was the exact same. I didn't understand one bit. I liked the involvement everyone had in Kelly's murder, but what the hell was that last line? I am so confused that I'm not sure what to say. I liked the fact that Suze was in the "laundry room" this whole time. I liked Suze as a character, but I wish she was explored more; I found her very interesting. Another twist that I liked is in the epilogue. Can't believe I liked something from the epilogue! I enjoyed the use of the repetition to explain how everyone was involved in Kelly's murder. It worked okay. I really liked the fact that they were all guilty, in some way. Other than those two twists, I didn't quite enjoy the rest. Especially the asylum thing, since it wasn't a huge deal in the end. And speaking of the characters, they were little more than vague outlines; each one's voice sounding exactly like any of the others. Since we didn't have a main character to bond with it was vital we had a diverse bunch of interesting characters in the ensemble, but this couldn't have been further from the truth.Sixteen-year-old Joan Chang-Hunt discovers she’s a “monster”, a member of one of the 12 great families of London with particular powers, including the capacity to steal time from humans. And that cute boy, incidentally, is out to kill her – he is the legendary “hero” determined to and prophesied to put an end to all of Joan’s kind.
Protagonist Ingrid straddles the space between these two camps, as a scholarship student secretly dating the son of a wealthy, influential senator. Joining his presidential campaign as her senior year internship, Ingrid draws the attention of the senator’s glamorous and principled political opponent, and begins to question the purpose of the power she so desperately craves. The setting was interesting, I guess; Irish language summer school. But the plot was nothing more than characters pottering about having mindless conversations while you were waiting for one of them to hurry up and die already - which didn't actually happen for the longest time! The characters were bland asf, the only character that wasn’t was Kelly, but Kelly was such an annoying bitchy character that I could’ve strangled her myself if I was in the story; LIKE SHE WAS SO ANNOYING AND RUDE TO ALL HER FRIENDSThese reluctant travel companions are drawn into a political struggle that has turned violent; the tension stems from which side either will ultimately choose. There are occasional clunky moments in the text, particularly related to exposition, but the characters’ nuanced emotional journeys in the face of inequality and violence ring true. This lushly described world is well worth vanishing into. The character of Amber was probably my favourite. She likes reading tarot cards, in fact it becomes a little obsessive, she is anxious and as a whole just very believable. I would have liked to have seen Rupert's character developed more but LB had a great story line. Actually. Not just me. Because the author - I forget their name, sorry! - kept writing random things leaving me incredibly confused as to what was going on. If that makes sense, which it probably doesn’t tbh (TBH OLIVIA!!) but like… yeah. Those names were some of the most unoriginal names that I have ever heard. I really liked Réiltín, Suze, and Tadhg...but what were the rest of those names? LB's real name sounded like the name of the protagonist of a bad Wattpad fanfic. The whole story felt like a badly written gacha story, if I must be honest. It was so anticlimactic and the names made the whole ordeal even worse. They were either so incredibly basic or so funny that it was bad. One of the group ends up dead by the closing stages of the book. We know this in advance, but there’s seemingly little preparation for this stage. We’re given minimal information about the characters that could explain these later events, and some of the potential interest is glossed over.
The characters weren’t bland, so to speak, (what the hell does so to speak mean - yk when you just know when to put a phrase into your sentence but the actual phrase just doesn’t make sense? No just me?) Loved the grammar in that one (sarcastic). The prologue is just one big giant mess that I decided to ignore. It was so childish and it wasn't needed at all because...guess what?! We don't read about them walking down once Kelly dies! The prologue could have worked better. The shape it created was a mess, as well. This is only the beginning of a thrilling adventure that includes venturing into ancient times such as the 1990s (where “the Rachel haircut is a time marker”) and grappling with the seemingly immutable rules of an unfair world. Joan desperately wants to save her murdered family, even as she is told it’s impossible: “Every monster goes up against the timeline...Everyone tries to change something at some point.”
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Also I told myself I’d be productive today as it’s the first day off for Easter (WE GET TWO WEEKS 🥳) but literally all I’ve done is shower (which is basic hygiene, come on Alice) and start Caraval which is class so far. Not that you asked (Whoever “you” are).
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