I want to preface this review by saying that I've been a casual viewer of Cindy's YouTube channel for at least a couples of years. I didn't necessarily have higher expectations than average going in, but I definitely was looking forward to The Secret World of Briar Rose more than to your average ARC. Although the concept didn't hook me 100 %, I thought exploring hypersomnia as suicidal ideation through a retelling of Sleeping Beauty was an interesting idea. Well well well.

This book is marketed as YA, so I'm not mad that it features a fairly standard adventure plot. My problem is that the pacing is completely at odds with what I think the book wants to be, and that is partly - if not primarily - because of overwriting. There are endless flowery descriptions of the environment that didn't make me understand how anything really looked. There is no sense of place despite so many words being devoted to describing it - and saying that's because the dreamworld is in flux is a bad copout. I think the problem is that half of the descriptions of the dreamworld are actually imagery to show the characters' emotions because their subconscious directly shapes the environment - which is fine in theory, but I think this would only work if readers had something to which to anchor themselves first before becoming unmoored and disoriented along with the characters. Disorientation and confusion is the default state of The Secret World of Briar Rose, which made it pretty much impossible for me to get invested in the world or the characters. There was nothing palpable to hold onto.

While the writing was overly flowery - not "objectively" but for this narrative specifically imo -, it was at the same time incredibly basic and repetitive on a sentence structure level. Short sentences with the exact same rhythm are strung together one after the other, rendering the reading experience extremely tedious. I wish more care had been put into this aspect of writing rather than trying to cram in the prettiest sounding words and metaphors - some of which made only very little sense to me ("Darkness took her like the bite of teeth." (as opposed to the bite of ???); "His voice spoke, a low sound made of lilting ink that seeped into her core." (his VOICE spoke? Is it its own entity?); "Drafts of wind cooled down the fires like a whisper." (the infamous cooling whispers I guess)). The writing sounds pretty but, overall, feels hollow. Literally style over substance.

The same is true for the characters. The book tells me that they have all these very big feelings, but it doesn't make me actually feel them. I'm sure this worked better for other people, but the emotional weight was seriously lacking for me due to how the characters were written and introduced. Corin and Elly's relationship was supposed to be the emotional core, but I found both of them so incredibly boring that there was nothing for me to relate to. Corin is angry and jaded and kind of an asshole to her sister, Elly is 12 (I think) and likes fairy tales. That's all you need to know to know EVERYTHING about their dynamic, which just isn't very compelling to me personally cause I've seen it explored the exact same way about 1000 times before. The other central relationship - the one between Amelia and Corin - comes completely out of nowhere and is almost laughable? They're suddenly kind of in love because ???? They do interact with each other, but it feels like they exist on different planets for some reason. Basically, I found it impossible to root for anyone or care about anyone's journey because no one was compelling in the slightest.

The last thing I want to mention is the worldbuilding, or rather the lack thereof. Gyldan is overrun by soldiers, but we never learn why they are in the country. Corin is from a family of refugees, but we never learn why they had to flee. A group of people plan a rebellion against "the soldiers", but we never learn whose and why. We don't really know what anyone's wearing either, except for super generic descriptions of "gowns". Everything is kept so incredibly vague, maybe to keep up the fantasy veneer, maybe to enable Amelia to simply get rid of monarchy when she wakes up lmao - seriously, she makes a speech telling Gyldan's citizens that monarchy is over now and they gotta establish democracy or something. Who had conflicts with whom and why the military powers that be just leave them alone afterwards? No idea. It's laughably dumb.

What completely baffled me was that bulldozers and PLASTIC exist in the world. How?? I saw a review mention that it's incredible that bulldozers and warplanes exist but no radio, and that's pretty much sums up the level of care put into the worldbuilding as a whole. Amelia's segments read Medieval-inspired, while Corin's timeline is set 100 years later - wtf happened in-between? The dreamworld is also super uninspired. It's ordered according to the seasons. Really? You could've done ANYTHING, and you pick "Summerland" and "Autumnland" as forms of your literal limitless dream realm? Boring.

Boring is the key word to describe this book to be quite frank - and that's one of its biggest sins in my opinion. I wanted to dnf so bad at 20 % because The Secret World of Briar Rose was such a slogfest, and I only managed to finish it because I quick-read and partially skimmed the rest. The repetitive writing that, at the same time, is too much for what is being described, unengaging characters and pacing that is simply too slow for what this book is was a deadly combination. Add to that that some things literally repeat (Corin almost drowns a good five times because we cannot think of another metaphor I guess) and I'm out. The flow between chapters is pretty abysmal as well; we switch timelines each chapter and the book tries to do a Tauben im Gras thing where chapter/section transitions flow into each other - only that The Secret World of Briar Rose absolutely cannot do that capably because it basically only repeats the last line from the previous chapter at the beginning of the new one, which doesn't make for a good transition at all.

I won't even get into the amount of line edits that still need to happen before this gets published, but I'm sure that's already been taken care of by now. Though I would miss sentences like, "The more the horns grew, the more Malicine grew." - as if the horns actually cause her growth lmao Honestly, The Secret World of Briar Rose might be fine if you're 13. I'm not sure because I'm not 13 anymore, but I think 13-year-old me might've liked this book okay. Still, I can't give it a pass only because it was written for a younger audience - my criticisms stand and I want young readers to have fun, cool, interesting, and compelling stories - which this simply was not. 1.5 stars.

Edit: I forgot the time travel stuff, which was incredibly convoluted and stupid. Generally, a lot of plot points were simply overengineered and overcomplicated. Kill your darlings is not always bad advice.

- ARC provided by NetGalley -

Well, it wasn't good. Really badly written and also PAINFULLY obviously written by a man. The characters were completely one-dimensional and not compelling in the slightest, which also extends to their relationships - the one kinda romance, for example, is only ever said to happen but never made palpable (they literally are being antagonistic towards each other for the most part??). Despite this, Hugh Howey insists upon spelling out every thought his boring characters have, which makes the book excruciatingly slow-paced. The man cannot write for the life of him but he LOVES to hear himself talk, so his readers are forced to sit through the most tedious descriptions of the flat interiority of his characters instead of getting to the fun mystery plot. If only I had an ounce of the deluded confidence of a mediocre man.

Also, and this may be on me, I was unaware of the fact that Wool is apparently a collection of short stories/novellas. I was ready to complain about the weird structure, about how one of the cooler "twists" is revealed in the first couple of chapters, but that makes more sense now. That being said, I feel like the book should've been re-edited to make it a smoother unified narrative with tighter pacing (the first two segments were the better ones, but weren't at all necessary for Jules' story, for example) - or at least should have a much clearer disclaimer tbh, but hey, whatever.

I don't know, I don't see myself continuing this series. It's so...flavorless I think is the word to describe it. Just plain unseasoned tofu with white rice. Nah.