⭐ out of 5
I was approved by the publisher to read this book before it was published and, as always, it'll be a brutally honest review of all the highs and, hopefully very few, lows as I read and feel them. It's one of the well-known, big publishers that I've read and reviewed for before, so they obviously know what to expect and have prepared the author for my brutal honesty!
If you've read any of my other more recent book reviews, you'll already know that I start each one off in the same way, by saying that each book I read and review starts off with the full five stars and I'm always hopeful that they will all still be stuck firmly in place by the time I close the back cover.
It's almost my bedtime, so I'll start reading tomorrow morning, but I can't wait to get started.
The publisher has taken notice of my previous comments either within reviews or past comments to them and has put in a first sentence saying that the ARC I've got is a proof copy, not a final one, so I won't mark the book down on things like missed pages or SPaG mistakes... if the magic sentence is included too, that could be a second star saved and I haven't even got past the first paragraph yet lol
My first impression of the book from the first two paragraphs is that it seems to be very old language and scene-setting for 2015 - more like the 1800s rather than the 2010's! Maybe the author likes, reads and appreciates classic literature, but it's very out of place in a 2015 setting! The author is setting the scene into 2015 but the word choices are very out of place for only a decade ago. If it was a classic then I would understand it, but it's making the book very hard to understand already unfortunately. I'm gonna give it another little while to see if the author changes the feel of the language used, but the star is already wobbly unfortunately.
I'm getting confused about the gender of the "I" in this first chapter... I thought they were female at first, then male and now back to female again - I get that the author is trying to set the scene, but they aren't doing a very good job of it so far, unfortunately. I'm gonna give the author one last chance before I remove the first star, but it's not looking like this is gonna be a five star book already, unfortunately.
That first sentence of the book has saved the star 'cos I'm not sure what "Guhd" is supposed to sound like! The author seems to be attempting to spell the accent and it is seriously affecting my enjoyment of the book already unfortunately.
And now we've got another character, so that's four characters already in the first chapter and I'm already getting confused between them all, so off comes the first star.
And now there's another one at the end of the first chapter so I'm mightily confused about who is who and how they know or don't know each other now! If the characters had all been spread out throughout the entire book, then it might have been a good read, but I'm already seriously confused about who is who and what their relationship and need to be in the book so early is, so the second star is already wobbly unfortunately.
Oh dear. The second page has got the brand name of an internationally famous audio technology company so I'm really hoping that magical sentence is at the end of the book otherwise I won't be able to re-attach the second wobbly star!
The second chapter was relatively short but the years are all over the shop already which is confusing me even more and I don't believe that a reader should have to make notes while they're reading a fiction novel but it's already starting to feel like I have to, so the second star is even wobblier now unfortunately.
And there's another brand name of a media company in the third chapter, so the second star is coming off after less than three chapters unfortunately. Will this already be another DNF?
Up to chapter four now and this book isn't as good as I was hoping for, unfortunately. Not the worst by any means, but far from what I was hoping for too.
The end of chapter four came out of nowhere and was a totally shocking surprise! I was tempted to knock another star off for boredom, but I've changed my mind now!
I'm gonna stop reading for the day now and I'll hopefully carry on tomorrow.
Chapters 5 and 6 were, unfortunately, boring, so I'm skipping forward for a while in the hope of getting some less boring bits. The third star is significantly wobbly already unfortunately.
OK, I've skipped ahead to chapter 9 and the chapters are too long again, unfortunately, so the third star is on the verge of dropping off unfortunately.
And now we've got celebrity names and internationally famous awards talked about, I'm assuming without permission, so the third star is plopping off unfortunately. Only one star left before it becomes another DNF for me unfortunately.
I rapidly lost count of the number of pages in chapter 13 but it was waaaay too many and could have potentially made for a very late night if I hadn't skipped forward so many pages again. I've officially given up on this book now so I'm taking the last star off and awarding it a disappointing DNF - I was really looking forward to reading it, but it's been a huge let down the more I've read. If the author had carried on in the same way as they did at the start of the book, then I might've been willing to finish reading it without taking so many stars off and certainly no skipping forward as much as I have done today. Overall, a huge disappointment.
