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Wednesday 27 February 2013

*** Review*** The Heart of the Curse by S.B. Santiago



On the Back of the Book

Florica and Amanda are friends that met at a hotel that was used for the homeless. After nearly two years of living at the hotel Amanda’s parents receive a gift from a stranger, which gives them a place to stay in the country. After they move into the small house Amanda learns that she lives next door to the boy she had a major crush on. After Amanda is visited by her crush’s best friend a ghost named Craig; she and her friend Florica decide to investigate Ryan and his current mood swings. Amanda and Florica are stunned when they find out that a member of Florica’s family has placed a circle of sorrow curse on Ryan that can lead to his death, while reaching out to others. They must travel across the continent in search of Florica’s brother with the hopes of uniting the rouge member while shaking the stink of gypsy magic.

Pre Read Thoughts
Due to this being an old book I’ll just write what I put in my review book.

This is yet another book I found for free on Kindle when I was loitering on Amazon. I picked it up because the synopsis sounded interesting, if a little wordy. The cover* is pretty dull and it’s not something I would buy but I’ll try anything once. This is 77p on Amazon, it’s only available on Kindle so if you’re a paper book lover then you’ve escaped the clutches of this book.

*The cover I can find on the internet isn’t the one I saw. The one now is pretty much a carbon copy of Michelle Zink’s ‘Temptation of Angels’ and that doesn’t make me like it any more. I really hate when books have the same cover. It’s confusing.


Post Read Thoughts

This is awful. It’s easily the worst thing I read in 2012. I had to start this review with a declaration to prepare for the onslaught of what I’ve written about this. It’s not pretty. I don’t mince my words. First of all I hated the layout of the book. There were massive gaps in between each paragraph and I wasn’t sure where to take a break. This also needs serious editing. I went from “Chapter 1” to “Chapter 3”. Where I come from there’s a number called 2 and for the life of me I just couldn’t find it and believe me I looked. At least twice. The actual story made no sense whatsoever, if you’ve read this can you please explain to me because I just don’t know. I also found the whole thing to be wooden, I would’ve just given up but I don’t quit on a book (I read the initial Mortal Instruments trilogy and you possibly saw what happened with those.). I blog to find books that I’d feel happy to get other people to read, this isn’t one of them.

Amanda bland, boring, dull. She’s so unengaging that I had a conversation with thin air every time she was mentioned. The only thing I found even remotely interesting was her connection to Craig the ghost and then the author did nothing with that. I’ll be damned if I actually pay money to find out what’s happening there.

Florica Florica is so forgettable that I couldn’t even remember her name once I’d finished. I also found her to be dull but she seemed to be important to the plot. The final part of the story where she took Amanda and Ryan across Europe seemed pretty pointless to me.

Ryan Poor, hexed Ryan. Well I say that but the hex/curse wasn’t explained well and the resolution seemed too easy. The way he felt about Florica was hopelessly obvious and I’m wondering why on Earth the girls didn’t notice. I also don’t get why he went to Europe with them, it was a bit desperate of him and no girl likes a pining puppy dog of a man.

Overall this book is horrific. There isn’t one thing I liked about it and I wish that I hadn’t downloaded it. It wasn’t worth the time and the effort it took me to read it and it most certainly wasn’t worth what I paid (which was nothing so ouch!) I don’t mean to be horrible but I vowed that I wouldn’t be one of those people who goes around giving every book 5 stars. It wouldn’t feel right and my mother would probably kill me for lying... (okay maybe not kill but she’d be mad.)

My Rating

1 Star Horrifically bad, it just didn’t feel good to read. Words cannot describe how much I detest this book. I recommend it to no one. Please don’t buy it, just scroll past like it doesn’t exist.

A Final Note
I wrote this review in 2012 after reading this book. It could have been edited (like the cover was) but I’m not reading it again to find out. This is how I felt at the time.

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