Friday 11 December 2015

Essence

Author: Beth Mikell
Genre: Fantasy/Romance
Book Rating: 6
Personal Rating: 6

I honestly started of reading this thinking oh this book would be awesome.  I even forced myself to ignore the fact that the queen was called the queen of hearts.  But sadly the book just didn't go anywhere.  It had all the promise of something real, Queen feeling emotions she's never felt before, a man who feels he has nothing to live for after the death of his brother, and a test to see if death really is what he wants.  Seriously the amount of character development depth and seriously intricate plot work the frame of this book held was ridiculous.  But that was about it.  The book was all set up and no go.  It hit a note and floated there, the entire short story.

It suffered from classic me Tarzan you Jane me save you syndrome.  A book that should've been about the man realising he was the one who needed to be saved turned out to be about him saving the woman.  I'm going to save you/her was basically the plot and it stayed on that note.  And then after him being forced to go through what he went through, the girl then has to do the same for him, it was like reading the same story twice.

The love scenes kinda fell flat too, too much talk about how I am yours you are mine, too much of the man smiling in triumph.  Just get on with the love making already.  The pain and self loathing I was supposed to feel the characters had just kind of came across as anger and bitterness.  There wasn't anything remarkably special about the situation.

It was like the whole first two chapters I think set me up for seriously in depth turmoil and it just didn't quite get there.  Honestly i felt the guy was too into himself, I'm going to save you.  You are mine, I love you, you must love me and all that.  I just couldn't roll with it.  And then she went and adopted the same attitude.  And now my review is starting to sound repetitious.  That about sums up my view of this book.  Repetitious on all accounts.  It just didn't sink deep enough into anything and definitely not at that pace you expect from a short story.

All that being said, it's a shame cause this book actually had the type of set up that full length novels are made of.  I really was that into it after the first few pages and then it was basically more of the same.  I wanted to enjoy it but spent a lot of time sighing and shaking my head.  

Was the book bad, no.  Was it great, nope.  It just sort of is what it is.  Good vacation reading when you want something you know you'll enjoy that doesn't require too much investment on your end.  If you like light reading than this book fits the bill, if you want something much deeper than that, than this book probably wont do it for you.

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