Hotblood
This was an unusual read–one I’m not too sure of my feelings on. The (what I think was a) prologue left me confused with its bombardment of ‘House’ details. Then when chapter 1 arrived, the 1stppov switched with no warning and it took me more than a page to understand we were inside the girl’s head instead of the boy from the beginning. And, although there were some attempts to teach the reader what was what through characters explaining them to the mc, I still didn’t really feel any the wiser–probably because the mc didn’t seem to be getting any of it either, which almost seemed like a cop-out to me on the writers behalf to save them having to go into in-depth detail.
I’d hit the halfway mark of the book before I found passages that didn’t leave me confused and scratching my head. I struggled to connect with the mc because she seemed to have been written with an element of detachment, and the fact she just dismissed anything she didn’t understand meant we never really got enough chance to understand her mentally or emotionally. I did see other reviews (thankfully) claiming other readers have been left confused by this one, and one of them even said something along the lines of: it was a confusing read but everything became clear at the end. Maybe I’m just impatient, but right at the end of the book is way too late for me to understand what’s going on and quit scratching my head.
There does seem to be an interesting (and extremely original) premise going on in this read–which should garner it some attention–but I felt the author should have spent a little more time weaving all the details in. Maybe even exchanging 1st person for 3rd would have helped so she wasn’t stuck with the old problem of the reader only being able to know what the mc does. Also, the transitions needed to be a whole lot smoother because they were non-existent and somewhat whiplashy. But this is merely one persons taste. There have been plenty who’ve enjoyed the read and didn’t seem to mind the confusions quite as much as they bothered me.
