After practically a month of reading this, I am done! Since I usually only take a day to read a book, this should tell you quite a bit about what I thought.
Thomas Fawkes is the main character but I just could not connect with him. There was nothing about him that set him apart from other characters I’ve read. But then again, there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with him. I simply found him boring, which made it tough to slog through 400+ pages of him.
I loved the setting, though! England has such a fascinating history and the 17th/18th century was a good one, though I prefer the 16th century myself. Nadine Brandes did a great job doing her research and created a setting that felt real. Also, the cover is gorgeous!
Reading the back of the book, it was cool to see how she took real events and added her own spin to them, but by page 230, I just didn’t care.
Emma was my absolute favorite. I wished she had been the protagonist, as I feel like I would have enjoyed the story far more if she had. I was pleasantly surprised to discover those things about her (can’t disclose much more because of spoilers) and thought it was a great touch, especially for the time period.
But, in the end, I was just bored. I couldn’t get excited about the plot, the characters, (except Emma and possibly Norwood) or the color powers.
On that note, I thought the color power was a neat idea, but I was confused as to what it meant to have a color power. Oftentimes it felt like the author was being vague on purpose, which just annoyed me. Also, White Light has such a modern voice? Was that intentional? Sometimes it acted like an arrogant jerk and other times like it was some wise god. That was definitely confusing as well.
I don’t think there’s much wrong with the book itself (besides what I mentioned) but I just didn’t find it interesting. My final score would be meh.
3/5 Stars
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