Recent DNFs

Sometimes a book just doesn't hit right and I am trying to take back my time and power over these ones...I don't want to struggle through them, I just want to put them down  - for now or for good. 

The below notes are just my current feelings around these books - that does NOT mean that they were bad, I just wasn't feeling them. Feel free to pick them up!

In the Did Not Finish... vibe is off, might pick back up category...

Fateless by Julie Kagawa 

Series: Fateless #1
Publisher: HarperCollins 
Publication Date:  July 15, 2025

  

Goodreads Synopsis: 

Deep in the forgotten city of the Deathless Kings, an ancient relic of untold power waits—for one bold enough to steal it.

When seventeen-year-old Sparrow joined the Thieves Guild she made a vow of binding loyalty to their cause. So when a mission comes along from The Circle, a group of mysterious, dangerous beings who control the Thieves Guild from the shadows, Sparrow is determined to cement her place in the guild.

What ensues is a death-defying adventure that has Sparrow and her band of thieves venturing into the heart of the forgotten city of the Deathless King. The fate of Sparrow, her companions, and Raithe, the enigmatic yet alluring assassin Sparrow is forced to join forces with during their quest, all hang in the balance as they find themselves battling ancient forces within the tombs and facing the unwavering hold of fate.

Perfect for fans of Alexandra Bracken and Sabaa Tahir, this new fantasy trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Julie Kagawa will sweep readers into a bold and exciting new world, where a twisted game of destiny has far-reaching consequences.

Why I DNFed...

I am a bit sad about this one, I wanted to love it and finish it, but I got through Part 1 ~50% done and just had no push to pick it up. At about the 15% mark I even bought the Audible edition (with my own $/credit) to see if that helped, and it did for a bit. 

I think that this has a good story in it, I am just not fully invested. Sparrow the FMC is a thief/ rogue who is young but accomplished. However, these types of characters even when young generally have the trust no one attitude and she consistently says 'every man for themselves' but she doesn't quite get it and it gets her into trouble. So the character class lost me a bit. I also felt like there was more telling than showing, and I would have loved more showing because it seems like this world could be a really cool one. 

I think I may grab this one again, just not at the moment - putting it on pause for the time being. 

If you like video games like Assassins Creed and fantasy books  - this could be for you.

In the Did Not Finish … and unlikely to pick back up category...

A Sky So Hollow by Craig Montgomery 

Series: The Stardust Duology #2
Publisher: Craig Montgomery
Publication Date:  July 7, 2025

  

Goodreads Synopsis: 

Some wounds never heal…

It’s been a few months since Casper Bell saved Novilem from crumbling under the pressure of revolution. The dust hasn’t settled, and neither has his nerves. A strange sickness is spreading in the city, and Casper is having visions about the tower Jacob sent to the Surface. Helix convinces him to bring his concerns to the Estellar council, but Helix’s trust in the system backfires. They send the pair to the last place Casper wants to be: Earth.

Casper’s past is right where he left it and corrupted aether still creeps on the streets of Chicago. When they find someone who is aether sick, it is clear they haven’t finished uncovering the council’s secrets.

With their friends and family falling sick, the fragile peace in Novilem collapsing, and the council ready to abandon the home they have fought so hard to protect, Casper and Helix must confront their inner darkness before Novilem is lost forever.

Why I DNFed 

No real fault of the author - but my ARC would not stay downloaded on my Kindle and it was driving me insane. Any time I wanted to read it would act like it never downloaded and queue up to download... then after multiple clicks finally let me into the book.

...That compounded with the fact that I was not really that invested in the characters or story, put this in the DNF pile. I enjoyed the first one and think that this one just fell at the wrong time for me.

I made it 23% in. At that point in the plot - we had covered most of the things noted in the synopsis - Casper a hero but having visions, no one taking them seriously, Helix loooooves him, and they go to Chicago for a bit and have to bring someone back because they have aether sickness. While it was flowing, I wasn't fully committed - sorry.

If you like a good sci-fi and are looking for some LGBTQ+ rep, this could be for you.

DNF Review - Party of Liars by Kelsey Cox

Source: From the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way alters my opinion or review. 

Party of Liars by Kelsey Cox 

Publisher: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: July 1, 2025

 

Format: Ebook 


Rating: 

 ~Did Not Finish @ 38%~


Goodreads Synopsis: 

A lavish, Texas-sized Sweet Sixteen turns deadly in this twisty, pulse-pounding new novel — serving up a fresh take on a classic locked-room whodunnit. Let the festivities begin…

Today is Sophie Matthews’s sixteenth birthday party, an exclusive black-tie bash in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, where secrets are as deep-rooted as the sprawling live oaks. Sophie’s dad has spared no expense, and his renovated cliffside mansion—once thought haunted—is now hosting the event of the season. Then, just before the candles on the three-tiered red velvet cake are blown out, a body falls from the balcony onto the starlit dance floor below.

It’s a killer guest list . . .

DANI: Sophie’s new stepmother who’s been plagued by self-doubt ever since the birth of her own baby girl

ÓRLAITH: the superstitious Irish nanny who senses a looming danger in this cavernous house

MIKAYLA: the birthday girl’s best friend who is not nearly as meek as the popular kids assume

KIM: the cunning ex-wife who has a grudge she can’t let go of . . .

Everyone is invited in. Not everyone will get out alive.

Review: 

I ultimately decided not to finish this book, stopping around the 38% mark. Unfortunately, the pacing was just too slow for me. By that point, I typically expect to be immersed in the core of a mystery, especially in a whodunit, but the story was still heavily focused on establishing the cast of characters rather than advancing the plot.

While character-driven stories can be compelling, I struggled to connect with anyone in the cast. The mother’s alcoholism felt like a one-note trait rather than something fully explored. The daughter came across as frustratingly oblivious, and her best friend seemed more like a passive follower than a person with her own motivations. And I’ll admit my own bias when it comes to stepmothers in fiction, but this one didn’t do herself any favors—she was mostly portrayed as a pretty face without much depth.

To its credit, the book introduced several intriguing threads early on—a mysterious note, a ghost referred to as “The Mother,” and the discovery of a body—but instead of building tension around these elements, the story meandered through alternating perspectives that never felt compelling or purposeful. The suspense didn’t build, and the emotional stakes never landed.

In the end, the combination of a slow-moving plot and a cast I couldn’t root for made it hard to stay invested. I can see how this might work better for readers who enjoy slower burn mysteries with a strong focus on interpersonal dynamics, but it just wasn’t the right fit for me.

DNF Review: Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney  

Publisher:  Flatiron Books
Publication Date:  August 30, 2022 

 

Format: Audiobook
Source: Borrowed from Libby, owned (gave away) BOTM copy.

Rating:

Did Not Finish


Goodreads Synopsis: 

After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.

The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…

Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.

With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling.

Review: 

I stopped listening to this book at 30% (~100 pages in). 

This was toted as an Agatha Christie-like mystery but it feel short for me. 

Daisy, the MC is whiney and sad through the first few chapters and her family is SO obnoxious. I waited until here was a murder to stop reading, hoping at that point it would speed up/ get better... but it was unbearable even after the mystery started. 

I kind of called all the paranormal twists... and that is NOT very Agatha Christie. She might have withheld information and reveled it at the end for the conclusion but there wasn't paranormal things. 

The reason I really stopped reading was the pacing was just so off for me. It was SO SLOW... I was listening at 2x speed hoping that would help and it didn't... that an everyone just sucked. Daisy, her family, her grandmother, all bad. The grandmother seemed like she just wanted to start things with the family, making her seem just as uppity as she perceived them... and she raised them, made them this way, so her trying to be the bigger person in the end (or seemingly so) was a loss. 

I just couldn't get passed the 'why start now?' element here... and stopped caring because in 100 pages nothing really happened.  I was disappointed and passed the book along to a friend with the disclaimer that it wasn't for me. I hope that she and others enjoyed it more. I am a huge fan of Christie, and this did not match up.

Early Reader Review: Follow the Shadows by Rosemary Drisdelle

Source: From the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way alters my opinion or review.

Follow the Shadows by Rosemary Drisdelle 

Series: The Tales of Moerden Book 1 
Publisher:  SparkPress
Publication Date:  September 19, 2023 

 

Format: Ebook

Rating:
DNF

Goodreads Synopsis: 

When Marise Leeson gets her hands on a crystal ball, she believes her knowledge of Wicca is about to expand. The magic, however, goes horribly wrong. In short order, she’s thrown into an alternate world, attacked by a dragon, and rescued by Javeer, a young male dragon in search of a friend.

Marise is desperate to get home alive. Instead of dabbling in scrying and spells, she must now use her Wicca skills to survive in Moerden―navigating rival dragon factions, riding Javeer without falling, and dodging unknown perils of an alien landscape. Through a series of adventures and mishaps, she learns that the dragons face slow extinction from a mysterious disease. Some see Marise as part of the cause. Some hope she’s a key to a cure.

Marise grows up fast as her focus switches from escape from Moerden to saving the dragons. She draws upon her powers, intuition, and some help from home as she and Javeer begin a quest to solve the puzzle of the stagger. If they survive, and if their trust and courage are strong, they may succeed. If they do not, the dragons of Moerden will cease to exist.

Review: 

I was so sad not to enjoy this one. I read about 100 pages before I decided to stop reading. 

This book follows a young girl named Marise. She is also Wiccan. I found this a bit hard to believe but gave it a shot. She gets a crystal ball and ends up in another world with dragons. Sadly, this one didn't hit - Marise was a bit of a brat. Especially about the orb/ crystal ball. She saw her teacher with it and hyper focused to the point of being rude and eventually stealing it. And that is AFTER her teacher goes missing and she has no sense of remorse or sadness about it. She was just like 'oh! He's gone, now I can have it' and that never sat right with me. 

Past that, I found the next bit to be a bit drab and boring and there was too much telling versus showing.  

This seemed like it would be such an interesting one, but sadly it just fell really short. 

If you are looking for a book about dragons, you might enjoy this more than I did. I also liked that there was a different religious perspective, but I don't really think it was conveyed well. 

Recent Reads: Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott 

Publisher: Anchor Books
Publication Date:  September 13, 2022

 

Format: Hardback
Source: BOTM October 2022

Rating:
DNF - 1 Star

Goodreads Synopsis: 

In the tradition of modern fairytales like American Gods and Spinning Silver comes a sweeping epic rich in Eastern European folklore--a debut novel about the ancestral hauntings that stalk us, and the uncanny power of story.

The Yaga siblings--Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist--have been estranged since childhood, separated both by resentment and by wide miles of American highway. But when they learn that they are to receive a mysterious inheritance, the siblings are reunited--only to discover that their bequest isn't land or money, but something far stranger: a sentient house on chicken legs.

Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas' ancestral home in Russia--but not alone. A sinister figure known only as the Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past: fiery memories that have hidden in Isaac and Bellatine's blood for generations. As the Yaga siblings embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family's traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows in relentless pursuit, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide--erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future.

An enchanted adventure illuminated by Jewish myth and adorned with lyrical prose as tantalizing and sweet as briar berries, Thistlefoot is an immersive modern fantasy saga by a bold new talent.

Review: 

I am sad about this one, I wanted to love it ... or even like it for that matter and sadly it was just too slow, and I was not invested enough to care to finish it. 

I DNFed this book at ~40%, I had been trying to read it for the last month, and in the meantime also finished many other books while avoiding it. The story is about a brother and sister that are pretty much estranged, but come together when they inherit the chicken-legged house. Now in order to pay off her side of the house and own it outright, Bellatine is helping her brother Isaac put on a puppet show... but there is also someone trying to find the house. At almost halfway through, there were no climaxes in the story at all, and I needed something to keep going and it just never came. I got to a section where they are sitting in a diner and talking and then Isaac has a flashback about a friend named Benji... and I tried to skip it... it was at that point that I realized the character building/ flashbacks that were meant to build were just depressing me and so I called it quits.

Where I think this book went wrong was in the pacing. It was so unbearably slow for too long. There are oh moments here and there but not with the characters we are meant to invest in. It also has a weird past/present issue that irked me... are we set in modern times with cell phones or are we in the 1930's because it oddly felt like both and maybe that was meant to bring on an 'old-soul' feel but it was just odd in context. 

I also still wanted more from this world - it was magical realism, so it was supposed to be able to set magic down in our world and ride it out, but I found the magic to be forced and not as seamless as I like my magical realism settings to be.

So, overall, this was not for me... however if you are looking for something slower paced, you might enjoy it. 

Recent Reads: The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell

The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell
Series: The Last Magician #1
Publisher:
Publication Date:  

 

Format: Ebook then Audible Audiobook

Source: From Netgalley and Simon Pulse for review. I also bought the audiobook copy on Audible.

Rating: DNF


Goodreads Synopsis: 

Stop the Magician. Steal the book. Save the future.

In modern-day New York, magic is all but extinct. The remaining few who have an affinity for magic—the Mageus—live in the shadows, hiding who they are. Any Mageus who enters Manhattan becomes trapped by the Brink, a dark energy barrier that confines them to the island. Crossing it means losing their power—and often their lives.

Esta is a talented thief, and she’s been raised to steal magical artifacts from the sinister Order that created the Brink. With her innate ability to manipulate time, Esta can pilfer from the past, collecting these artifacts before the Order even realizes she’s there. And all of Esta’s training has been for one final job: traveling back to 1902 to steal an ancient book containing the secrets of the Order—and the Brink—before the Magician can destroy it and doom the Mageus to a hopeless future.

But Old New York is a dangerous world ruled by ruthless gangs and secret societies, a world where the very air crackles with magic. Nothing is as it seems, including the Magician himself. And for Esta to save her future, she may have to betray everyone in the past.

Review: 
Back when I first received The Last Magician, I tried to start reading it and I just could not get into it. Recently I bought myself an Audible subscription and decided that I should try the Audiobook version to see if that helped my focus. I got about 20% of the way through and I decided to give up on it. 

The plot was starting to pick up and the characters were developing and new characters were even being introduced but I was not able to feel for them or the situation at all... and I really tried. I just was not feeling this book, which is sad because I know so many people really enjoyed it. 

The book has a bunch of time jumps and various characters that all come together eventually I assume (probably in the end ...which I didn't get to), however with all the different characters and all the time changes it was hard for me to follow since it wasn't already grabbing my full focus.  

Esta, the main character, from the beginning, seemed stubborn and impulsive and so when things happened to her I wasn't surprised that she was getting into trouble, nor did I feel for her as the protagonist. 

This has the potential to be the beginning to a great fantasy series, it just wasn't for me right now, maybe I will try it again down the road.

Recent Reads: The Walled City by Ryan Graudin - DNF

Disclaimer:I received this book from Netgalley and Little, Brown books in exchange from an honest review. This in no way alters my opinion or review.

The Walled City by Ryan Graudin
Publisher:  Little, Brown
Publication Date:  November 4, 2014

 

Format: ebook

Rating: DNF


Goodreads Synopsis: 
730. That's how many days I've been trapped.
18. That's how many days I have left to find a way out.

DAI, trying to escape a haunting past, traffics drugs for the most ruthless kingpin in the Walled City. But in order to find the key to his freedom, he needs help from someone with the power to be invisible....

JIN hides under the radar, afraid the wild street gangs will discover her biggest secret: Jin passes as a boy to stay safe. Still, every chance she gets, she searches for her lost sister....

MEI YEE has been trapped in a brothel for the past two years, dreaming of getting out while watching the girls who try fail one by one. She's about to give up, when one day she sees an unexpected face at her window.....

In this innovative and adrenaline-fueled novel, they all come together in a desperate attempt to escape a lawless labyrinth before the clock runs out.

Review: 
I think when I started reading this book I was burnt out reading dystopia and so I never really got too invested in the characters or the plot of the book. I read up to about 20% and the  stopped reading. 

The synopsis of the book made it sound interesting and emotional, set in a horrible world- a walled city for criminals. What I found was a lot of mystery in the first part of the book and a lot of character point of view switches which made it harder to follow.

Since you never really spent too much time with each character I didn't really feel  for any of them and their tones are all very similar so it never lended the opportunity to know them well - I kept having to retrace my reading to see who I was reading.

The plot ended up feeling like it could have been a much shorter book and so even stopping at 20% I felt like I was reading the same things over and over and it really felt more like a lawless city than a dystopian one...
 



 

Recent Reads: The Hit by Melvin Burgess - DNF

Disclaimer: I received this book from Netgalley and Chicken House in exchange for an honest review. This in no way alters my opinion or review.
 
The Hit by Melvin Burgess
Publisher: Chicken House
Publication Date:  February 25,2014

 

Format: ebook

Rating: DNF


Goodreads Synopsis: 

Live the ultimate high. Pay the ultimate price. The shocking return to YA by the author of SMACK.

A new drug is on the street. Everyone's buzzing about it. Take the hit. Live the most intense week of your life. Then die. It's the ultimate high at the ultimate price. Adam thinks it over. He's poor, and doesn't see that changing. Lizzie, his girlfriend, can't make up her mind about sleeping with him, so he can't get laid. His brother Jess is missing. And Manchester is in chaos, controlled by drug dealers and besieged by a group of homegrown terrorists who call themselves the Zealots. Wouldn't one amazing week be better than this endless, penniless misery? After Adam downs one of the Death pills, he's about to find out.

 Review: 
I requested this book via Netgalley a long time ago, over a year ago in fact, and it has taken me this long to finally write about it. I picked this book up almost immediately and couldn't really get into it. Then last month I stumbled upon it on my Kindle and tried to pick it back up. I struggles again and got through about 44% of the book. I just couldn't continue it was taking too long for me to read and I really wasn't enjoying it.

The book is about a kid who hates his life and it just keeps getting crappier - one night he decides to take a drug that will give him the craziest week of his life and then he will die. This sounds like such an interesting premise - what would you do in that week? I wanted to know what Adam decided to do... but what I got was this horny, depressed kid, trying to solve his problems with drugs, sex, violence and then suicide.Even the backstory about the drug itself just fell flat for me.


The writing is done well enough and other readers might enjoy the book but it just wasn't for me; Adam, the main character, doesn't really think about the world after him and his to-do list for his crazy week was off putting and honestly (I felt) nasty.

If you are a fan of drugs, sex and violence in books than this may be up your alley, but not mine.



 

Recent Reads: Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk

Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Recorded Books
Publication Date:  October 21, 2014

 

Format: Audiobook
Source: From Librarything Early Reviewers and Recorded Books in exchange for an honest review. Receiving this book in no way altered my opinion or review.

Rating: DNF

 


Goodreads Synopsis: 

Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk’s no-holds-barred approach to writing continues to win loyal fans and impress critics. Combining a sexually provocative story with a first-class thriller, Beautiful You exposes mega-billionaire C. Linus Maxwell’s plan to rule the world by marketing an extremely potent erotic device for women. Fiction
“His semi-erotic writing is efficacious.”—Publishers Weekly


“A billion husbands are about to be replaced.”
From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Sisters will be doing it for themselves. And doing it. And doing it. And doing it some more … Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a big Manhattan law firm with an apartment in Queens and no love life at all. So it comes as a great shock when she finds herself invited to dinner by one C. Linus Maxwell, aka “Climax-Well,” a software mega-billionaire and lover of the most gorgeous and accomplished women on earth. After dining at Manhattan’s most exclusive restaurant, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris, where he proceeds, notebook in hand, to bring her to previously undreamed-of heights of orgasmic pleasure for days on end. What’s not to like? This: Penny discovers that she is a test subject for the final development of a line of sex toys to be marketed in a nationwide chain of boutiques called Beautiful You. So potent and effective are these devices that women by the millions line up outside the stores on opening day and then lock themselves in their room with them and stop coming out. Except for batteries. Maxwell’s plan for erotically enabled world domination must be stopped. But how? 

 Review: 

NOT A BOOK FOR YOUNG READERS!!! Heavy Sexual Content and Violence.

I requested Beautiful You from an Early Review program and started listening to it almost immediately after it was released in October – and I was shocked. I am not even sure how that happened. I am used to Palahniuk and his shocking crazy books and plots, but this one was horrifying. The book begins with a rape scene, not uncommon for this author, but it was very graphic and off-putting almost immediately.

So I stopped listening to the audiobook and put it aside. As I have been trying to read more my TBR pile that I own – I picked it up again and brought it to work to listen to during the work day (since I sit at a computer all day it seemed like a good idea) and it was! I listened to 4 full discs of the 7-disc audiobook. Then I gave up.

I hate to say that I am giving up on a Chuck Palahniuk book, I love all of his others (for the most part) but this one just wasn’t for me and here is why. First off the graphic, violent beginning, followed by more and more less aggressive but still pretty intense sexual and striking behaviors. It wasn’t even the erotic nature of the book that was disturbing; it was the manner that it all seemed to be presented. I felt awkward and icky the whole time and so I am not going to listen to anymore.

Overall I think that once you get past the shocking nature of everything there is probably a good twist on how sex and pleasure to the extreme is bad... but oh well, I didn't get that far. And I know that the point of Palahniuk’s books is to be shocking almost to the extreme, so if you enjoyed this book, more power to you, it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

 

Recent Reads: A Wounded Name by Dot Hutchison- DNF

A Wounded Name by Dot Hutchison
Publisher: Recorded Books - Audiobook, Carolrhoda Books - Print
Publication Date:  September 1, 2013 as Hardback

 

Format: audiobook
Source:Librarything Early Reivewers program and Recorded Books in exchange for an honest review

Rating: DNF


Goodreads Synopsis: 

There's a girl who could throw herself head first into life and forge an unbreakable name, an identity that stands on its own without fathers or brothers or lovers who devour and shatter.

I'VE NEVER BEEN THAT GIRL.

Sixteen-year-old Ophelia Castellan will never be just another girl at Elsinore Academy. Seeing ghosts is not a skill prized in future society wives. Even when she takes her pills, the bean sidhe beckon, reminding her of a promise to her dead mother.

Now, in the wake of the Headmaster's sudden death, the whole academy is in turmoil, and Ophelia can no longer ignore the fae. Especially once she starts seeing the Headmaster's ghosts- two of them- on the school grounds.

At the center of her crumbling world is Dane, the Headmaster's grieving son. He, too, understands the power of a promise to a parent- even a dead one. To him, Ophelia is the only person not tainted by deceit and hypocrisy, a mirror of his own broken soul. And to Ophelia, Dane quickly becomes everything. Yet even as she gives more of herself to him, Dane slips away. Consumed by suspicion, rage, and madness, he spirals towards his tragic fate- dragging Ophelia, and the rest of Elsinore, with him.

YOU KNOW HOW THIS STORY ENDS.

Yet even in the face of certain death, Ophelia has a choice to make- and a promise to keep. She is not the girl others want her to be. But in Dot Hutchison's dark and sensuous debut novel, the name "Ophelia" is as deeply, painfully, tragically real as "Hamlet". 

 Review: 


I decided to just give up on this audiobook, I listened to the first 2 discs or so and I just could not bring myself to finish it. I tried again the other day to listen to it and just could not get into it. I originally requested this book thinking it would be a modern retelling, I was sadly disappointed.

A Wounded Name is a retelling of a Shakespearean Classic, Hamlet. Told from the point of view of Ophelia, the reader begins the book with mental illness and death and it does not get any better from there. The time period the book is set in is confusing, or at least it was to me, they speak like it should be Shakespearean, but there is a note about cell phones and jeans, so right of the bat I felt like I was going crazy.

On top of being confused about the setting, the relationships all seemed creepy to me, there was a lot of verbal abuse and I also felt like the progression of the tale was leading to sexual abuse as well (maybe not- I didn't make it that far).

The beginning of the story was about grief  and depression and that is all that I could feel while reading it. This may be a good thing, that the author creates those intense awful feelings, but for me it made me want to stop listening and move on. I really wanted to enjoy this one too.

Recent Reads: Weather Witch by Shannon Delany- DNF

Weather Witch by Shannon Delany
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Available: Now

 

Source: Netgalley and St. Martin's Griffin
Format: Ebook

My Rating: DNF

Goodreads Synopsis:

In a vastly different and darker Philadelphia of 1844, steam power has been repressed, war threatens from deep, dark waters, and one young lady of high social standing is expecting a surprise at her seventeenth birthday party–but certainly not the one she gets!

Jordan Astraea, who has lived out all of her life in Philadelphia’s most exclusive neighborhood, is preparing to celebrate her birthday with friends, family and all the extravagance they might muster. The young man who is most often her dashing companion, Rowen Burchette, has told her a surprise awaits her and her best friend, Catrina Hollindale, wouldn’t miss this night for all the world!

But storm clouds are gathering and threatening to do far more than dampen her party plans because someone in the Astraea household has committed the greatest of social sins by Harboring a Weather Witch.

Review: Weather Witch is a new series by the author, Shannon Delany. Toted as Young Adult and Steampunk in genre the plot takes place in Philadelphia in 1844 and is about a young girl taken from her family, accused of being a witch and enslaved for the use of her power.

I received this book as an e-copy from the publisher and just recently got around to reading it. I have heard over the interwebs that it was going to be a love it or hate it type of book. The masses are definitely divided. I have seen 5 star raving reviews and 1-2 star loathing ones.

I requested this book based on the premise, it was going to be Steampunk and about witches and it is YA…completely up my alley right? Well… not so much, sadly. I really wanted to like and get deeper into this book but I got to 46% and then decided to call it quits. I don’t DNF much but this was one of them for me.

The whole time I found the book to be mmmeehhh. I enjoyed the scenes about Jordan, the main character, and her situation and the doom becoming of the Astraea household but found the other characters boring and their stories for the time being completely astray from the main one, and there were a lot of them.

The book jumps around to various groups of characters and their events after Jordan’s party is broken up by the worst thing that could possibly happen…someone being deemed a witch! (I say this kind of mockingly, because in the first few chapters Jordon brings up this statement A LOT! I understand that you are alluding to the rest of the book, but really like every paragraph?!)

The classification of steampunk was an interesting one for this book; first, it is set in the US in Philadelphia, which in and of itself is strange for a steampunk setting. Secondly, for the first half of the book there isn’t all that much to give us the steampunk world building; yes, there are airships and yes their electricity is gathered in a rather unusual fashion, but normally when a book is steampunk it is STEAMPUNK.

The one thing that I did enjoy was something that wasn’t even in the plot, but the naming of the family, Astraea. I thought it was intriguing that Jordan and her family is thrown into this conundrum of justice against witches when their name essentially stands for ‘justice.’ Astraea was a Greek goddess, also known as the star-maiden (if I remember right :/) and she embodied justice along with innocence and purity…all things that I think are great if they really allude to more in the story later. I just couldn’t have that be the only reason I kept reading (sad face).

Normally this is where I say something along the lines of “this book would be great for people that enjoy …” but today I am not sure I can do that. I don’t think it will appeal to the diehard Steampunk fans and I am not sure there is enough instant plot happening to appease the normal YA readers. If you think this plot line is something for you, feel free to pick it up, I just thought it was slow moving.


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