I thought those were all fantastic qualities. Isobel seemed to really care about her family, she appeared level-headed, and she was passionate about her painting. The characters were terrible! Flat and one dimensional, cliche and boring. Once I began to dislike the way the story was written, any interest I had in the characters and their journey pretty much died. It takes more than some purple prose and nice imagery to make up for a hollow story about vapid characters. There were some pretty words strung together here and there, but it was not working as a whole. Some parts I felt were trying to be relatable or funny – the peeing scene, the naked spying, the kissing and weird riding scene, the pimple, and Isobel talking about how much she stank – but those just came off as really awkward to me. Isobel’s voice was monotone and very simple. And beyond that, the actual sentence structure, syntax, grammar, and voice were very bland. Not to mention, the whole story had so much telling and basically no showing, which also made me feel removed from it.

It felt like I was not in the action as it was happening, but just being told how it happened from some boring girl in the future.

It felt quite childish and distanced me from the actual story. The main character Isobel was talking directly to the reader at points in the story, in an after the fact manner. I was not a fan of the fairytale-sounding, addressing-the-reader first person narrative that was going on.

What first really turned me off of the story was the writing style. Nothing turned out to be as I expected, really, which resulted in a pretty boring, sappy, and basic story. Unfortunately (!), An Enchantment of Ravens was nowhere near as awesome as I expected. And then, I started to hear some great things about the book, including people comparing it to A Court of Thorns and Roses (which, duh, I love). I was really excited to read this book! I thought the cover was beautiful and I love stories about faeries/the fae, so I was pretty hyped. The whole world is made of dust, and always returns to it. “You would claw your neighbor’s eyes out for a mouthful of dust.

An enchantment of ravens review