So, I’ve been doing a series of posts talking about some of the books I read that I never got around to talking about. We are starting to get to some books that I’ve read a little more recently than some of the other books, so I have more to say about them…but also not quite enough to do a full review. If that makes sense.
Poison’s Kiss by Breeana Shields. I wanted to like this one a lot more than I did. It’s a cool concept, an assassin who can kill people by kissing them, but it didn’t work for me. And that’s a little disappointing, because I really wanted it to work well. I loved how Marinda looked out for her brother, and how much she cared for him. It was really nice to see, but that was the only thing that I really, absolutely loved. The story didn’t make a lot of sense, but things are magically explained at the end. The thing that made the LEAST amount of sense was how another girl had to seduce the boys that Marinda kissed. What’s the point of death by kissing if you’re not the one seducing them enough to get close to them? And how do these boys even go from the one to Marinda without questioning it? I do not understand this at all. What, Marinda can’t seduce them or something? Or this other girl can’t kill them? This makes zero sense to me. My rating is 2 stars for things that didn’t make a lot of sense and the lack of world building.
The Secret History Of Us by Jessi Kirby. I used to LOVE her books, but the more Jessi Kirby books I read, the more I dislike them. I don’t know if it’s because my interests have changed or I’m harder to please because I read a lot of YA contemporaries, but I didn’t like this one as much as I thought I would. The pace was pretty slow, and I wanted more of Olivia dealing with her amnesia. She does try to piece things together, but I wanted more frustration or something from Olivia. I also wanted more with Walker, but instead, he barely made an appearance. I wanted more of a reveal, and I felt like something bigger was going to happen. But nothing bigger happened, even though the book made it seem like something mysterious was going on. The Secret History Of Us gets 2 stars. It was okay, but I wanted more than what we got.
American War by Omar El Akkad. I really liked this book at the beginning, and it was really interesting. But then it lost steam, and I lost interest by the end of the book. Like The Handmaid’s Tale, the future we see in American War is one I can picture easily. You do get a good look at what a modern war would look like, and it’s interesting that climate change is what triggers the issues between north and south. I would have it expected it to be over something else, women’s reproductive rights, LGBT rights or something involving religion. I know it’s terrible to make an assumption like that, but I do like that climate change is what triggers because it is different than what you might expect. I felt like a lot of things weren’t really explained or addressed, and it felt like something was missing regarding the use of fossil fuels. I don’t know if maybe Sarat’s perspective really limits what we know, since she was 6 when war broke out, but a little more broad of a picture would have been nice. American War gets 3 stars.
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