Reviews and Comments

This is an interesting book where romance is the adventure. It is not a typical romance in the sense that it follows the genre storybeats. It is romantic because love is the driving motivation for both of the characters.

Lileena's journey is to pursue a love that was lost before she runs out of time. Adam's journey is to learn what love is.

The book is rather lengthy, covering different locations around the world. Yet,the first half, or more, felt fairly repetitive with regards to the characters' own internal journeys. However, once Adam starts to have a shift in his emotional journey the story became interesting again.

This book is good for those who do not mind a slower start to reach a meaningful end.

I'm starting a book I picked up from a random visit to the author's restaurant. It's a long journey, but I'm curious to see where it goes!

I'm interested in learning about the history of the commons and where it may still reside

This book was compelling to read not because of any sense of mystery, of which there is some, but because I wanted to learn more about what the characters were thinking.

The author chose to have the chapters cycle through the perspective of different characters surrounding the main character, Nora. It's a story of grief, how the grief of one person spills onto the other, and how people may have done and said one thing but actually thought or felt another way.

It was a good reminder that we are all stumbling through the world trying to make the best out of the mistakes we have made.

I would recommend to anyone who enjoys seeing things from another person's perspective, but if you are looking for a straight up mystery novel, like the synopsis implies, you will be disappointed.

This book starts off with a fairly comedic feel, but it does a good job of letting the reader know there will be dramatic things coming ahead.

The author does a good job of building up from slice-of-life to a full on murder mystery. It mostly takes the first person POV of the teenage girl, Vera, but it occasionally takes on the perspective of others to great comedic or dramatic effect. The one thing that kept me from giving it 5 stars was that the main antagonist, a "rival" teenage girl, was mean without any context, and it would have been good to change to her POV to help flesh her out more.

The book touches on a some difficult subjects (alcoholism, domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, bullying) without resorting to being overly graphical. The characters' struggles to cope with all of their traumas is used to help the reader feel the impact.

It is a good read for those that enjoy young adult novels with a good balance of comedy, drama, and discussing some heavy subjects.

This has a funny tinge to a murder mystery. Let's see where this goes!

This book was a pretty decent read, not only in terms of quality but as in length; coming in at nearly 500 pages. This book lays the foundation of a new world with dragons, gods, and magic.

In the story the main setting is across a few points of interest in the country Kiata, but there are cursory mentions of other nations beyond the sea. Each setting has a distinct impact on the main character and her growth.

The romance tropes trickle in slowly until the faucet is fully opened by the end, at which time I felt glad that the book was over.\

The rules for magic were easy to follow at first, until, again, at the end where the exceptions seem to either be poorly explained or simply put in place to give the main character plot armor. Those trip ups were jarring considering that with almost 500 pages there shouldn't be this feeling of being rushed to reach the conclusion of everything.

However, even with it's flaws at the end, it was a very enjoyable to follow the journey of the main character and watch her grow. I would totally be interested in reading the sequel to learn more about the other countries use of magic and the influence the dragons have over the human realm.

I don't usually do fantasy novels but this seems like it will be interesting.

I really enjoyed this novel. At it's core, it is a romance novel but it expands greatly with the main character's personal growth. The path she takes to grow is winding but necessary. The author does a great job with making a twist on the "destined to be together" trope which left me satisfied with the outcome.

I would highly recommend to anyone who has ever experienced the struggle of being at a crossroads in their life, which is everyone at some point.

romance #existentialism #POCauthor

I'm interested to see how this existential romance type novel will play out.

The book is a general fiction that is more slice of life than anything else. It is about how relationships are effected by the lived experiences of the people in them. This is punctuated by the fact that the first half of the book focuses on the separate experiences of the two leads, who don't even meet until the latter half of the novel. Even then, the timing for them isn't quite right (much like it plays it in real life sometimes) and they don't actually form a relationship until a little after the first half.

I actually felt that narrative structure worked really well. I was so involved by each of their own stories that by the time they actually met I had forgotten that the novel was about their relationship. It was very interesting to see how their trauma, which we learn so much about, effected the relationship.

The only criticism I have is that since the novel took so much time to explain their backstories, it seemed to rely "love at first sight" to get them to form a close relationship quickly; but maybe that is just me being a cynic. Other than that, I highly recommend this book looking for realistic fiction.