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A review by read_game_stitch
Lakesedge by Lyndall Clipstone
3.0
Lakesedge is the first book in a duology about Violeta, who lives to protect her brother Arien and to hide his feared and reviled shadow magic. Rowan Sylvanan is the monster of Lakesedge, said to have drowned his entire family when he was a boy. When Rowan takes Arien with him to Lakesedge, Violeta refuses to let him go alone. She soon finds herself interested in both Lakesedge and the monster.
This story had a lot of promise, but honestly there just wasn't enough plot for me to really love it, and there was a lot of repetition of events, if I can even call them events. I love a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers but I still expect a solid plot alongside it. I feel like I could summarise the whole plot here in one paragraph and the romance was more glacial than slow burn, so that's not enough content for me personally. I haven't read the second book yet, but I suspect that the two books in the duology could probably have been combined into one standalone book more successfully. With less filler and more action, I would have liked this more.
I'm not a massive fan of present tense either, as anyone who's read my previous reviews will probably be aware of because present tense is everywhere in YA books these days so it feels like I'm always moaning about it. I can only really enjoy a book in present tense if the plot is just so good, exciting and fast paced that my brain is too busy processing everything to get hung up on how irritating I find the present tense. With the very slow, descriptive pace of this book, unfortunately my brain had plenty of time to get irritated by the present tense.
Violeta did have a bit of martyr syndrome which was slightly irritating too but I did enjoy her relationship with Rowan. I feel a bit bad about this rating because it wasn't a bad book, it was probably a 3.5 but I didn't feel like I wanted to rate it up to 4. As a comparison, I recently read the Shepherd King duology by Rachel Gillig which is also a gothic fantasy duology and I rated both books in that duology 5 stars because I thought there was the perfect balance of plot, romance and atmosphere that Lakesedge is missing.
This story had a lot of promise, but honestly there just wasn't enough plot for me to really love it, and there was a lot of repetition of events, if I can even call them events. I love a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers but I still expect a solid plot alongside it. I feel like I could summarise the whole plot here in one paragraph and the romance was more glacial than slow burn, so that's not enough content for me personally. I haven't read the second book yet, but I suspect that the two books in the duology could probably have been combined into one standalone book more successfully. With less filler and more action, I would have liked this more.
I'm not a massive fan of present tense either, as anyone who's read my previous reviews will probably be aware of because present tense is everywhere in YA books these days so it feels like I'm always moaning about it. I can only really enjoy a book in present tense if the plot is just so good, exciting and fast paced that my brain is too busy processing everything to get hung up on how irritating I find the present tense. With the very slow, descriptive pace of this book, unfortunately my brain had plenty of time to get irritated by the present tense.
Violeta did have a bit of martyr syndrome which was slightly irritating too but I did enjoy her relationship with Rowan. I feel a bit bad about this rating because it wasn't a bad book, it was probably a 3.5 but I didn't feel like I wanted to rate it up to 4. As a comparison, I recently read the Shepherd King duology by Rachel Gillig which is also a gothic fantasy duology and I rated both books in that duology 5 stars because I thought there was the perfect balance of plot, romance and atmosphere that Lakesedge is missing.