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Post from the How to Break a Girl: Whatever doesn't break you makes you write a novel about it forum
Trying to read the book gave me many reasons to DNF it. The author responding to negative reviews on Goodreads was the final nail in the coffin for me.
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How to Break a Girl: Whatever doesn't break you makes you write a novel about it
Amanda Sung
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Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
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Empire
Sabaa Tahir
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Fallen City (Fallen City Duology, #1)
Adrienne Young
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This Blade of Ours (This Monster of Mine, #2)
Shalini Abeysekara
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My Roman Empire is the Roman Empire
Books inspired by the Roman Empire but make it ✨️fantasy✨️
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Post from the Verity Guild forum
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Kill Billionaire
Anders Lustgarten
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I think H.M. Wolfe certainly had a vision when it came to New Found Haven, but she lacked a deeper understanding on how government and sociopolitical landscapes operate, hence the shallowness of the worldbuilding and the illogical reasoning behind the established regulations. The mask law is absolutely convoluted, and it's clear it only exists as a plot device to force the leads into an arranged marriage and put them in a forced proximity situation. The consequences of seeing another elite person's face being only either death or marriage is laughable, and it has no other purpose. This plot device fails to serve the larger engine of government and how it subjugates the city's citizens under the president's regime, and there’s no explanation for the core structures of the overall system that keeps the people under the Serel family regime.
The attempt at a rebellion also falls flat, with elements feeling borrowed from other existing dystopian stories with nothing new or inspiring done with them. It feels like Wolfe saw those plot points of revolution used in other media, but didn't seem to understand what about them made them effective.
Overall, a disappointing read. I had to look up the ending, and after understanding the twists, it feels like people are mistaking interesting plot twists for good storytelling.
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Society of Lies
Lauren Ling Brown
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The Library at Hellebore
Cassandra Khaw
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Yellowface
R.F. Kuang