Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Ugh! Too much romance! Just too much of it! I understand that this book is a fairy tale retelling, but seriously, the amount of romance in the story just distracted the reader from the actual plot. I would have liked the book a lot more without all the mushy stuff. The plot itself was pretty cool, but I had a few problems with it as well.
Spoilers Below
I’d say the thing I disliked the most about this book, was how Maia was constantly a damsel in distress. Many are probably now thinking, no way! She was not a damsel in distress, don’t you remember that part where she almost dies trying to get the sunlight!? At to that I’d say: Exactly, she almost died, and who had to come save her? Why the enchanter, who also happens to be her love interest, of course. I feel like for Maia to be a truly strong female character, she had to be able to pick herself up even after a grueling trial, and keep fighting without needing someone to save her between those two steps.
Something I did like about the book, was all the sewing montages. I know how to sew and I’ve made my own clothes before, but that was a long time ago. This book made me want to go find something to sew again. I also, kind of wish we could of had a bit more explanation as to what the sun, moon, and star dressed looked like, without using sewing terms. Even with my experience sewing stuff and taking sewing classes, I ended up imagining all of the dresses like ballgowns: the type you would see Cinderella wearing.
I really liked the relationship between Maia and her brothers. I haven’t seen many books where a female protagonist has multiple brothers and I wish we could have had more time with them to explore that relationship.
This whole girl pretends to be boy thing actually got me in the mood to watch Mulan again (the original one). I like these types of storylines, especially when someone has a crush on the deceiver thinking they are a girl or a boy. That can provide some very comedic scenes. This one was a pretty good version, but not my favorite.
One thing I think the book was lacking was a bit of laugh out loud humor. I really love books that make me laugh, but this one was just a dark fantasy all the way thru with no funny bits. Actually, I take that back, there was humor, but it wasn’t the laugh out loud humor I like. It was more like, oh look Maia is drunk, let’s all laugh at her… It was kind of sad.
The thing that really made me dislike this book was actually the writing style. There are some author’s whose writing just clicks for me and others where it doesn’t. This was one of those. That does not mean the book is not good or that you won’t like it; it just means I didn’t. The writing style of a book is really one of the deciding factors of whether a book becomes one of my favorites. After all, if I can’t enjoy the actual words of a book, how can I enjoy the story?
Overall, I think this book was ok, but there were a lot of things that irked me. The biggest was definitely Maia’s damsel in distress leanings and the writing style. However, if you are fine with reading a book like that then go ahead and try this one. I would recommend it to someone who enjoys, some pretty dark fantasy with a lot of romance, clearly, not someone like me.
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