Laura Jean

I’m so conflicted- Holly Black is my favorite author but this 2 part story was strangely badly written. Phrases were repeated a lot which I’ve NEVER seen in her books before. “He tasted blood from where a tooth cut his lip” is repeated 2x pretty close together. And the “the rough silk of her hair” is repeated - which doesn’t make sense anyway - and the banter is amateur!! It felt like first run around fan fiction. WHY???? Oak was so annoying and boring. His quips were poorly written, and he spends SO MUCH TIME thinking one thing and then rationalizing that it would be futile or take too long or not be believed if he actually just said what he was thinking - and so he says some noncommittal thing which the other person takes to mean exactly opposite of what Oak means, and he never corrects them!! He’s always misunderstood when there is no reason why he can’t speak his mind. Literally the most wishy washy things come out of his mouth and it just stops being believable that he needs to keep up this playacting guileless version of himself. I really really wanted to like Ren, but there’s no substance to her character. The “betrayal” really didn’t feel like that big a betrayal. Like if I guessed the twist literally as soon as the concept was introduced she should have too. It made NO SENSE about the deer heart. Obviously it wouldn’t be a real sticky bloody heart!?! Also why can’t T & M be together?? Like that also seems SO forced. So he tried to kill the High King…. So what? These Folk are always trying to kill each other??? Just realized I’m reviewing this after reading the second book from Oaks POV. Why did it feel like Holly Black had a ghost writer or something??