After the death of her childhood sweetheart and facing widespread blame, Eleanor decides to leave Edinburgh for London, hoping to find a happier life. There, she joins a global women's society and meets women with diverse goals and visions. But Eleanor, finally finds what she's been seeking and retreats to a mysterious island owned by billionaires, after receiving an invitation from Henry. Yet, has Eleanor truly found the solace she's been searching for, or is it all a manifestation of psychological turmoil?
All my reviews have the possibility of spoilers, be warned!
I would like to start this review by saying thank you to Nas Ben for an ARC of this book. However, I think you most definitely have given this to the wrong girl. This was not my type of book at all. And although this was one hundred pages I struggled massively to read this. I am not the type to just completely destroy a book in my reviews, I really do try to find some good moments to highlight them for other readers. But I genuinely from the bottom of my heart did not have one.
One issue I had with this book was the formatting. At first, I thought it was my Kindle that was messing up, but after looking at other reviews I don’t think it was just me. There were a lot of grammatical errors that made it hard to read, some speech didn’t have quotations, or there were random arrows instead of quotations. I’m not sure what was going on there. It made it difficult to read because this book just felt like a draft, rather than a final piece. The hardest thing of them all was the constant back and forth between characters and points of view. Sometimes it would switch to a third-person point of view and I had no idea what was going on, or sometimes it would be a random character that just wasn’t relevant. It was hard to keep up when it wasn’t distinctive from the point of view, it just caused a lot of confusion when reading. Even though this book was one hundred pages there were so many different characters' points of view. Like I cannot function with short books and loads of different plot lines.
The next thing I’m going to touch on is the overall plot line or at least what I think it is. I’m going to start off by saying I do not mean any disrespect towards this theme, community and or group of people. From the blurb, you almost think this book would be about overcoming trauma and flourishing into a new person. I felt really tricked because I somehow read a Therian book. I didn’t even know we had Therians in the UK I’ve never bloody seen one so how has this happened? It was so confusing it just came out of nowhere. I’m still so lost on the storyline of it. It doesn’t really make sense to me which could be why I completely lost interest in this book, I’m sure someone who is knowledgeable or part of this theme would enjoy this book more. But for me, I just found out very hard. I also think that the overall plotline has so many holes in it, there’s just too much going on for a properly detailed story. It is near enough impossible for me to get connected to characters when multiple things are happening at once. I genuinely don’t understand how we went from the feminist group to the Island, to me it felt poorly written.
The overall writing level is aimed at someone intellectual, there are a lot of big words and complex descriptions. In the beginning, I thought it was lovely because I thought it was Eleanor’s personality. But then I realised it was just the whole book. In my opinion, it was used to just cover up the lack of emotional connection which did work but obviously isn’t something I want out of a book.
Some of the descriptions in this book had my head in my hands. Especially when talking about women’s bodies. It simply felt cringe, I’ve never read a description like this and all I could feel was pure shock because I couldn’t fathom why it was included. I had to blink my way through it so my mind wouldn’t have to register these words. I really wish this wasn’t in the book because when we look at the settings description it’s lovely, so this really does just taint and ruin it for me.
The cropped shirt emphasizes her long legs, and delicate belly button, like a pearl in the middle of her abdomen, showcasing the under average boobs, and her appealing backside.
Pablo was playfully tapping on the girl’s rounded drums.
I would like to reiterate, that someone out there could enjoy this book, that someone is not me. I mean no disrespect to those involved in the Therian themes. I do appreciate the arc review, however this type of book isn’t for me.