insta-love – takes two to book review

Review: This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi

March 20, 2022 Anna and AlexisLeave a comment

Alexis:

Happy Sunday, everyone! I’ve been enjoying reading and writing in coffee shops lately. I’ve always loved their atmospheres (and plus having some good green tea and a peach danish always helps, too).

I just finished reading This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi. Mafi’s writing is absolutely beautiful and atmospheric. Just on a writing level, this book was a joy to read. I absolutely loved her descriptions of the landscape and the world. It was so vibrant and lovely on the page, and it made her worldbuilding of the Persian mythology inspired world great.

This Woven Kingdom has two POVs: Alizeh, the long lost princess of the Jinn kingdom, who became a servant to hide after the murder of her parents, and Kamran, the crowned prince. I thought Mafi’s characterization of both main characters was great, but I especially enjoyed Alizeh’s chapters.

All that being said, this is a very slow moving book, and if you haven’t picked up on it yet, I love slow moving books. But while the worldbuilding and characters are so well-established, barely anything happens in this book, and it’s over 500 pages long! Besides what happens in the end, the only main plot point is some insta-love.

Overall, this book felt like one long set up for the next one in the series, but I’m interested to see what happens in the next one.

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐.75

Review: Dance of Thieves Duology

November 7, 2021November 7, 2021 Anna and AlexisLeave a comment

The spines of the Dance of Thieves duology perches on a windowsill next to a Sweater Weather wood-wick candle, and a small pot of cat grass.

Alexis:

Dance of Thieves by Mary E. Pearson had been on my tbr for years, and I finally said, You know what? I should get it from the library.

I had no idea this book would focus so heavily on the romance, but I didn’t mind it. The story follows Kazi, a solider of the queen’s, and Jase, the leader of the Ballenger family, an influential family that rules a kingdom that the queen doesn’t recognize.

Let me start out by saying that Pearson’s writing is great; the writing itself is 5 ⭐s. She has the perfect writing style for a fantasy book like this one, and I really enjoyed it. I also really love dual POVs, and I think it worked well for the story.

I simultaneously loved this book and thought it was just okay. I sped through the first half (despite never having read Pearson’s other series, where Dance of Thieves takes place, and struggling a bit with the worldbuilding).

But this book has a lot of long sections that drag. The writing and world feel like adult fantasy, but this is definitely a YA book, because we have some almost-insta-love, enemies to lovers, and teenage angst.

I think the parts that just felt okay to me were the constant backs and forths. This is basically an enemies to lovers, and then lovers to enemies, and then back to enemies to lovers book. There was a lot of miscommunication, which I’m starting to dread in romance-heavy books. And to think it was the miscommunication plotlines, as well as all the extraneous worldbuilding details, that bogged down the story.

That being said, I enjoyed it as a whole, and I’m hoping I’ll like the second one even more!

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐/5

Vow of Thieves:

What a sequel! This book makes up for the slow plot in Dance of Thieves. While the book is still long, there’s so much more action. The stakes are super high. Kazi and Jase are separated for the majority of the book, which adds to the longing and stakes of the book.

I enjoyed getting to know all of the side characters more.

There are a couple aspects that kept this from being a 5-star read, however. While I liked that Kazi and Jase were separated, as I think it helped with character growth, I think it went on just a little too long. I waited like 300 pages just for them to be together again, and considering the first book was mostly insta-love, I didn’t really get to see them grow together as a couple.

On top of that, there was one “plot twist” that kept being hinted at, but it was very obvious from the get-go what it was. And it also dragged on for almost 300 pages.

Despite that, I flew through this book, and overall, I enjoyed it!

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Review: Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop

January 8, 2021January 8, 2021 Anna and AlexisLeave a comment

Alexis:

I hate giving a book 2 stars, but this one just wasn’t doing it for me.

I liked the overall idea, and I enjoyed the descriptions of the food.

However, the writing style was stiff and didn’t have any variety to it; it felt like every sentence was the same length. It was very much so “She said this. They did this.”

I found the dialogue and characters to be the same. The dialogue sounded very unnatural, and it didn’t help that all of the characters talked the same way. There was no subtext to the dialogue; it was all, “I’m sorry Auntie. I didn’t mean it.” “That’s okay. I still love you, Vanessa.”

Besides that, there was a lot of name dropping. There’s a scene in the Louvre where Vanessa and her love interest dissect every piece of art. Vanessa constantly talks about how fancy her aunt is, and name drops designers left and right. At times, it felt overly elitist.

The romance in the book was also pretty weird, including insta-love that just didn’t feel genuine to me.

And finally, whenever the background characters heard one of Vanessa’s predictions, they always accepted them as truth. I found this odd. I’d be very weirded out if I heard a prediction about my life come out of a stranger’s mouth, and I expected there to be more conflict from this.

I was hoping this book would be a nice, easy change of pace, but I just found it a little disappointing.

VERDICT: ⭐⭐/5