Further Comments... | ||
Premise: From debut author Victoria Miluch comes the riveting story of a girl on the cusp of womanhood living in an arid wasteland and the encounter with two outsiders that upends her understanding of the world beyond it. Only the most hardened survivalists can endure living in the scorched deadlands of the former state of Arizona. Among them is nineteen-year-old Georgia Reno, who lives in an isolated desert settlement with her father and younger brother. When two mysterious strangers arrive on their land, Georgia begins to question her sheltered existence. Soon, her tentative curiosity blooms into a fledgling desire to leave the settlement, even if it means venturing into a world her father has only ever warned against. The word "riveting" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that opening sentence from the Amazon description. As much as I liked the premise, my Amazon First Reads selection this month was a real disappointment. I got 25% of the way into the book before I started skimming because nothing was happening. It really bums me out when a story sounds interesting, but the author doesn't know how to properly pace a story (or flesh out the details). This book felt like the author either started writing with no sense of when the story needed to get started, or was padding the word count by adding a lot of unnecessary exposition (and yet, inexplicably, very little relevant character development). The result was a book that, two weeks later, I literally had to look back and confirm I actually read because I didn't remember a thing about it. | ||
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Created Mar 09, 2024 at 1:11pm •
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