| ARC Review |
Broken Tides is set in The New World 30 years after a major event causes most of the world to be covered in water. There are five islands remaining and they are all fighting against each other for power. Abigail is our FMC who discovers many secrets of her past and goes through many ups and downs.
Now for the actual meat of the review: *may contain spoilers*
- The writing style is choppy and redundant with enough spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors to make your eye twitch. I hope for Denelsbeck’s sake that she finds a new editor to review this story before release.
- Where is the world building? I want to know more about her "royal" background, the event that caused the world to be covered in water, etc. There is not enough context given to us throughout the story.
- The cringey internal dialogue...I just can't
- I feel that a lot of the story is fast paced with no time for build up. This was a story that at its core has a lot of potential, but was poorly delivered. Often written to be overly shocking with so many plot twists that naturally most just can't stop reading to see what happens.
- The unrealistic fight scenes that were overly detailed and almost just gore. I will say the author gets an A for descriptive writing because she is good at painting the scene for us.
- This may be considered being nitpicky, but attempting to use big words to make your story seem more shocking or cooler is a big turn off for me when they are used incorrectly. Her use of anatomy words during fight scenes like "I stepped on the balls of my phalanx"... just use "balls of my feet".
- *Spoiler* When Caspian drowns and she performs life saving CPR on him it is referenced at the end that he was out for "10 minutes". Another just unrealistic setting because he'd actually just be brain dead at that point, not waking up and joking about her removing his pants. Which also leads me to say that there are a couple of parts of the story like this where the timeline just does not add up. How old is she? One time she is referenced as 26, another at 28. Who knows?
- *Spoiler* The quick, what is supposed to be passionate, love story...the entire sex scene had me laughing. The thought of her falling madly in love with this villain, as Caspian is portrayed, after FOUR DAYS (maybe less) has me eye rolling and heavy sighing. Maybe it's supposed to be the falling in love with your kidnapper troupe? He confesses his love for her when she doesn't even remember ever meeting him! But all of a sudden she feels *yearning* for him. Where is the build up?? Where is the enemies to lovers banter (tbf some banter is there, some) and slow burn that we all want. Sigh.
- Abigail, the FMC, is I guess meant to be a badass sword fighter but we never see that but once or twice. I feel like she is portrayed as a naive young female who has never experienced life (she hasn't tbf) and just has men saving her everywhere she goes. I feel like we could have been given so much more here. We all want the FMC who kicks ass, is feared by all, stands up for herself, is independent (or at least I do). Maybe some are into the damsel in distress type of characters.
- *Spoiler* Why do Ace and Caspian have similar backstories? Both found around ages 10, both starved in an alley. I would have liked to see more depth there.
I am sad that this story was not more. It felt like 1/3 of the book was ripped out and we were constantly left asking "how did we get here? what happened?" I want to know more about how the world ended up this way, I want more slow burn with Caspian, I want that badass FMC that I know Abigail has the ability to be.