Helpful votes received on reviews: 93% (150 of 161)
Location: London


Top Reviewer Ranking: 30,580 - Total Helpful Votes: 150 of 161
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
THIS REVIEW HAS POTENTIAL SPOILERS (nothing explicit), I just feel like I cannot explain my mixed feelings on this book without going a tiny bit into spoiler territory.

The Miniaturist is about Nella, an eighteen-year-old girl in 17th century Amsterdam who is thrust into an arranged marriage with an older man and has to cope with living in a household of closely guarded secrets, puritan values and in-laws and servants who both intrigue and terrify her.

The premise is compelling but I feel that a potentially gripping story is let down by an unevenly executed, sometimes bizarre plot.

The first 50 pages or so are engrossing and purposeful and I was looking… Read more
Half Bad by Sally Green
Half Bad by Sally Green
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Half Bad is about a teenage boy, Nathan, who is the only half Black, half White witch trying to find his notorious Black Witch father before the Hunters do, so that he can receive his three Gifts and become a fully fledged witch before his 17th birthday - or he'll die.

It's a great premise and there are some intriguing scenes and details that more than live up to the promise of this premise. There's just not enough of them.

While Nathan has a goal, and there are stakes, Green puts such insurmountable obstacles in his way that there is no possibility of his journey ever beginning - not until about three quarters of the way through the book. This means that the vast… Read more
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
47 of 54 people found the following review helpful
There's a good story struggling to get out from beneath a mountain of information in The Bone Season.

It's a cliché to blame the editor but in this instance, Ed really should have taken this promising young author aside and said, `Look, how about we get the plot into shape, cut a lot of this info, yes? Hold it over for sequels? Good.' Ed didn't do that (I presume) and as a result, TBS almost collapses under the weight of its own narrative.

I won't recount the plot since so many reviewers have already done so.

I'll say there are two major reasons why the masses of information in TBS ruin the reading experience: 1. The information presented is not… Read more

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