*** Review*** Lament by Maggie Stiefvater

On the Back of the Book

Sixteen-year-old Dee is a cloverhand – someone who can see faeries. When she finds herself irresistibly drawn to beautiful, mysterious Luke, Dee senses that he wants something more dangerous than a summer romance.

But Dee doesn’t realise that Luke is an assassin from the faerie world.

And she is his next target.

Pre Read Thoughts

I read Shiver easrlier in the year and loved it. So when Lament appeared at the top of my very long TBR pile I knew I was going to read it. I bought it quite a while ago at my local WHSmith for £7.99 but I’m sure that if you look around you can get it much cheaper. The thing that drew me to Lament is the black and red cover. It’s stunning and the white dove just makes it look even better. The synopsis is very generic and what I’ve come to expect from YA but I hope that this book is as good as Shiver.

Post Read Thoughts

I’m on the fence with this, but one thing I do know is that I didn’t like anywhere near as much as I liked Shiver. I wasn’t drawn into the story and I didn’t find this unputdownable. I love the idea of the story and this is the first book I’ve read about faeries so I was hoping that this would offer something different to the YA PNR genre but it didn’t. It felt like a book that I’d read a thousand times before and it had the originality of a cardboard box. I did find the story to be predictable and I wish it hadn’t been.  On the plus side I do really like Maggie Stiefvater’s writing.

Dee – Short for Deidre (what kind of name is Deidre?), she’s the MC for this book and doesn’t interest me at all. She’s just like every other lead character and I think it’s about time an author came along and changed that trend so I’d have something to actually write here.

Luke – He is the dark, mysterious, dangerous man that Dee falls in love with after about, ooh, I don’t know, two seconds. I didn’t like him and I didn’t like how the author justified his actions. Also I’m not entirely sure that soulless people can fall in love.

James – You’re clever people. I’m sure you can figure out that James is Dee’s best friend that’s secretly in love with her. Unfortunately he’s one of the duller best friends and I’m not a fan of his either. Sorry dude! You just need to stand out more.

Overall I think this book screams average. It’s not got much going for it and that disappoints me. It’s also not very memorable, when I wrote my original draft review I’d finished the book less than an hour beforehand and I could barely remember the story. The characters were dull, the plot drags, I think watching paint dry would be more entertaining than reading this.

My Rating

2 stars – I was going to give this three but I don’t feel that it deserves that extra star. It’s hopelessly meh inducing but I think that teen girls, especially ones that adore YA PNR, will lap this up and dream of Luke for a while.