Kate Quinn is on one of the authors on my “auto-read” list whose works I will definitely read regardless of what she writes. Also, while I’m not a completist of her works (not yet at least), I’ve loved each of her historical fiction books that I’ve read so far (in addition to Quinn’s wonderful storytelling skills, it also helps that historical fiction happens to be my favorite genre). Given all the above, I have to admit that I was a bit thrown for a loop when I heard that Quinn’s newest book would be a fantasy novel – a genre that I’m not keen on and don’t read much of (not because there is anything wrong with the genre, but because my overly practical brain doesn’t know how to process fantastical stories and worlds). Hence, whenever I read fantasy books, I’m never able to fully “get into” them, regardless of how amazingly good the worldbuilding (or writing) is. To reiterate, this is very much a “me” issue rather than a genre or book issue.
I say all this because, unsurprisingly, I did end up struggling with a few aspects of this book, though very little of it was due to the actual writing or the storytelling, both of which were excellent. As a lifelong book lover, I of course love the idea of being able to live inside my favorite book and I’ve honestly lost count of how many times I’ve imagined doing so – which is perhaps why the “book-traveling” portions of this novel were the most engaging for me. I was so curious to see how this unique and brilliant premise would be executed and let me tell you, Quinn definitely did not disappoint in this area. From the costumes to the period / historical details to the familiar characters from so many beloved classics, each of those worlds truly did come alive for me, which I loved. The downside to this was that the amount of time spent in each world was way too short. When I first found out that the story’s characters would be traveling to the worlds of some of my favorite novels, I was anticipating an immersive experience -- while we did get a bit of that with some books, most were short stints with the characters hopping in and out quickly (or the “world” is mentioned kind of in passing but we don’t really get to “experience” it). These sections, while short-lived, were absolutely enjoyable.
With that said, the biggest struggle for me with this book was the main character, Alix Watson. Unfortunately, Alix is exactly the type of female protagonist that I absolutely cannot stand – the “adult acting like a petulant teenager” type who is whiny and impulsive with an “act first, think later” mentality that of course leads her into one unnecessarily compromising situation after another, then afterwards berates herself for behaving like an idiot. This is exacerbated by a large portion of the story focusing on Alix’s inner monologue where she repeatedly catalogues her every thought and feeling about how crappy her life circumstances were – to the point that her sob story started sounding like a broken record that annoyingly kept inserting itself and overshadowing the “fun” parts of the story. Normally, these types of characters would be huge turn-offs for me in terms of staying with the story (I rarely ever DNF, but I do “heavily skim” when circumstances call for it), but in this instance, I stuck it out (I didn’t even do “light skimming,” lol) because this is Kate Quinn after all and the other aspects of the story were compelling enough to keep me invested.
Overall, this was my least favorite Kate Quinn novel and the first one that I rated less than 4 stars. Nonetheless, I will continue to read anything Quinn writes and look forward to her next book (though admittedly, part of me hopes the next one will go back to being historical fiction).
Received ARC from William Morrow via NetGalley.
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