Skip to main content
Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 4, 2021
This is one of those books that was not necessarily a bad book, just very much not for me.
I'm gonna dive right in and say the real problem I had with this book was the main character. She was almost relatable in some ways---worrying about aging in a world that's cruel to women past their 20s, struggling with relationships and heartbreak, struggling with mental health, having existential crises---but she was so judgmental, superficial, selfish, and unlikeable. And she brought most of her problems on herself by making terrible choice after terrible choice. Most of the book was just her essentially whining and telling the reader about her life and judging people. And she never grew or actually learned anything or became a better person, not even by the end of the book. Or maybe she did, but only the tiniest bit. I'm not saying she wasn't realistic, just that I didn't like her or find her interesting or see any real redeeming or compelling qualities in her.
I also wasn't really into the writing itself. In some ways, it was what it needed to be to portray this character and her POV. But sometimes it sounded a little too unnatural. Like when dialogue lacked contractions.
Also, if you've ever wanted to read about terrible sex, boy is this the book for you! These sex scenes were supposed to be bad. Most of them, anyway. And they were. So bad. Even the good ones were weird, with quotes I cannot share on Amazon, but you can find them in my review on Goodreads.
More things I disliked or found ridiculous: Ok I basically can't put this whole paragraph here either, but you can find it too on GR. It was all very strange.
According to some other reviews I've seen, this book is more women's fiction than fantasy. (As someone who doesn't read the women's fiction genre, I'm taking their word for it.) I think it might be considered magical realism, but I've never fully understood what that genre is. Basically, there's merman sex, but the merman might not have been real. I'm not sure if the author intended it to be 100% clear and I just didn't grasp it, but I think it's one of those ambiguous reader interpretation things.
I listened to the audiobook for this, and the narration, by the author, wasn't great. Everything had the same unnatural cadence. Dialogue didn't sound natural, the way people would actually speak. She didn't do different voices for difference characters (except for one bad English accent (at least it sounded bad to me, but I'm not English), which was especially jarring for male characters. She kind of sounded like she was bored while reading, though maybe that was a choice in portraying the character. But it was especially weird to hear characters in a sex scene talking with this bored, matter-of-fact, "reading an essay out loud" sort of cadence and voice, no different from the way she read every other line. There was no voice acting or performance whatsoever. No emotion. Her narration style made everything sound ridiculous, in a bad way. I know some of the things in the book were supposed to be ridiculous, but not like this. Or maybe it was supposed to be like this. Who even knows? But for me, it just highlighted how forced some of the writing was. I feel like a good narrator might've had a chance of at least making this somewhat compelling in its realism and and humorous in it's ridiculousness.
In many ways, I think this book was meant to be ridiculous, but it wasn't ridiculous in the right ways for me to enjoy it. And I think it was meant to be more than just that, but I just didn't get whatever else I was supposed to get from it. On the other hand, it can be refreshing to find a book about such a flawed character, who actually could be relatable in some ways. And despite being full of complaints, I didn't hate it. I wanted to finish and know how things would turn out. So this wasn't for me, but other people may enjoy it.
*Rating: 2 Stars // Read Date: 2020 // Format: Audiobook*
More Reviews @ Metaphors and Moonlight (link in profile)
I'm gonna dive right in and say the real problem I had with this book was the main character. She was almost relatable in some ways---worrying about aging in a world that's cruel to women past their 20s, struggling with relationships and heartbreak, struggling with mental health, having existential crises---but she was so judgmental, superficial, selfish, and unlikeable. And she brought most of her problems on herself by making terrible choice after terrible choice. Most of the book was just her essentially whining and telling the reader about her life and judging people. And she never grew or actually learned anything or became a better person, not even by the end of the book. Or maybe she did, but only the tiniest bit. I'm not saying she wasn't realistic, just that I didn't like her or find her interesting or see any real redeeming or compelling qualities in her.
I also wasn't really into the writing itself. In some ways, it was what it needed to be to portray this character and her POV. But sometimes it sounded a little too unnatural. Like when dialogue lacked contractions.
Also, if you've ever wanted to read about terrible sex, boy is this the book for you! These sex scenes were supposed to be bad. Most of them, anyway. And they were. So bad. Even the good ones were weird, with quotes I cannot share on Amazon, but you can find them in my review on Goodreads.
More things I disliked or found ridiculous: Ok I basically can't put this whole paragraph here either, but you can find it too on GR. It was all very strange.
According to some other reviews I've seen, this book is more women's fiction than fantasy. (As someone who doesn't read the women's fiction genre, I'm taking their word for it.) I think it might be considered magical realism, but I've never fully understood what that genre is. Basically, there's merman sex, but the merman might not have been real. I'm not sure if the author intended it to be 100% clear and I just didn't grasp it, but I think it's one of those ambiguous reader interpretation things.
I listened to the audiobook for this, and the narration, by the author, wasn't great. Everything had the same unnatural cadence. Dialogue didn't sound natural, the way people would actually speak. She didn't do different voices for difference characters (except for one bad English accent (at least it sounded bad to me, but I'm not English), which was especially jarring for male characters. She kind of sounded like she was bored while reading, though maybe that was a choice in portraying the character. But it was especially weird to hear characters in a sex scene talking with this bored, matter-of-fact, "reading an essay out loud" sort of cadence and voice, no different from the way she read every other line. There was no voice acting or performance whatsoever. No emotion. Her narration style made everything sound ridiculous, in a bad way. I know some of the things in the book were supposed to be ridiculous, but not like this. Or maybe it was supposed to be like this. Who even knows? But for me, it just highlighted how forced some of the writing was. I feel like a good narrator might've had a chance of at least making this somewhat compelling in its realism and and humorous in it's ridiculousness.
In many ways, I think this book was meant to be ridiculous, but it wasn't ridiculous in the right ways for me to enjoy it. And I think it was meant to be more than just that, but I just didn't get whatever else I was supposed to get from it. On the other hand, it can be refreshing to find a book about such a flawed character, who actually could be relatable in some ways. And despite being full of complaints, I didn't hate it. I wanted to finish and know how things would turn out. So this wasn't for me, but other people may enjoy it.
*Rating: 2 Stars // Read Date: 2020 // Format: Audiobook*
More Reviews @ Metaphors and Moonlight (link in profile)
