I haven’t posted a lot of reviews this year, and I think that is in part because I started and didn’t complete quite a few books. I thought it might be interesting to review which books those are, why I didn’t finish them, and if I intend to keep reading.
For the uninitiated, DNF means did not finish.
As usual, this post includes affiliate links for Grammarly.
#1: A Dance of Cloaks by David Dalglish
I started reading this book at the suggestion of a friend. I had said something about wanting to read a fantasy novel with a great mystery twist, and she recommended a Dance of Cloaks. I did start and stop this book many times, but for some reason, I kept falling asleep. I struggled to get through the first five chapters and I ended up sitting it aside when my attention was pulled to books that I was enjoying more.
I don’t think it is a bad book or unreadable, but for whatever reason, it didn’t hold my interest. Maybe it is because a review that I read pointed out that David Dalglish said he wanted to write the next Game of Thrones and my mind kept being reminded of that in the prose.
I might try to finish this book in the future if nothing else to have something to chat with my friend about. But for now, I’m setting it aside.
#2: Sinister Magic (Death Before Dragons #1) by Lindsay Buroker
So, I am a huge fan of Lindsay Buroker’s podcasts but I had never actually read a book of hers. She used to be part of the SFF Podcast and now is part of the Six Figure Authors podcast. She’s easy to listen to, funny and seems to give great advice on publishing.
Because I’ve been listening to her for years now (like 6?), I decided to try out her book. I first started listening to the audio version on Youtube and this is where things go wrong. I enjoyed the audiobook and had it play in the background while I did chores or whatever. But Youtube is a challenging platform to listen to because it doesn’t save your spot. So whenever I was interrupted, by life and responsibilities, I had to do some side-scrolling to find my place.
Eventually, I grew irritated with this and gave up. And Sinister Magic happened to be available on Prime Reading, so I grabbed it on my Kindle and started reading. But I was also frustrated by this because I wasn’t sure where I had left off in the audio version and ended up re-reading multiple chapters that I had already listened to.
The book itself was pretty good and I found myself laughing out loud during parts of it. But I have very limited reading time and I found it frustrating to keep track of where I was and I haven’t sat down to flip through the pages and find out where that would be…
I might go back to this one, but it also wasn’t so good that I feel like putting in the work to figure out what I have already read. Does this make me a lazy reader? Probably.
I recently got Audible to hopefully eliminate this problem in the future.
#3 Victim Six by Gregg Olsen
I’ve reviewed books by Gregg Olsen before and generally love his descriptions and the straightforward way he can twist up a mystery and unravel it. However, this book was so repulsive to me that I not only did not finish it but I feel a little sick anytime I look at the cover.
In this book, the murderer has a scene where he is stalking a victim on Facebook and looking through the photos and he’s… pleasuring himself. Not with lotion or lube like a normal human, however, but with blood from a previous victim. The scene is so disgusting and out there and completely repulsive.
This is a fiction novel by Olsen, and he writes both, so I have no idea why he dreamed up this bizarre detail and decided to write it down. I don’t mind violence but this was just awful and I definitely will not be returning to that story.
#4 The Seahorse Cottage by Carol Harper
This is a short story that I read and if the reviews don’t tell you anything, this book is just bad. It’s really bad. And I grimaced through 75% of it before I realized that life is too short to read books that make no sense.
Am I Getting Pickier?
I’ve been an avid reader for most of my life. And when I was a teenager, I think I forced myself to finish every single book that I picked up. I’m a bit of a completionist. When I played through Ocarina of Time, I had to find every single Skulltula. But I no longer feel the pressure to read through books if I’m not enjoying them.
Even stranger, I enjoy beta reading and editing books more than ever. I love going through unfinished stories and finding little snippets that I love about them. But if a book is out there and I paid for it, I need it to make sense. And if you have a scene where people do ungodly things with blood, please put a trigger warning on it.
I do find that I have far less patience for fantasy nowadays, and excessive world-building makes me fall asleep. I appreciated that Lindsay Buroker’s book was fast-paced and funny, and skipped over the usual fantasy droll. I can’t say whether I’m getting pickier about what types of books I read though, only that I am pickier about which ones I will finish.
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