Annabeth Neverending by Leyla Kader Dahm
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Thank you NetGalley and Create Space for providing me with an ARC of Annabeth Neverending in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
The Gist
I still have quite a few books sitting on my “to-read” NetGalley shelf, so I thought now is just as good a time to finally check them out and review them as any other.
In the past, I would have a few weeks off during which I had enough time to get super excited about new books and then schoolwork would catch up with me again, putting my reading and reviewing plans on hold.
And that’s the story of my ever-growing list of books I mean to read. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, until you get buried alive by that stack of books that keeps growing exponentially.
Ancient Egyptian history has fascinated me since my humble years in grade school, so any story that is set in or incorporates elements of Ancient Egyptian times has my attention.
The Details
I always get a little sad and frustrated when I come across a story that has so much potential and just never quite gets there.
Let’s start with the characters, primarily with the protagonist. She came across as stand-offish, very judgemental and just a little too eager to accept that she might be a special snowflake.
We got some kind of love triangle going on with two boys, who at least look very different. So, there is some variety in the eye candy the reader gets to ogle. Hot dog!
The secondary characters felt staged, sometimes awkwardly staged in order to move the plot forward, instead of letting it occur naturally.
The dialogue felt equally forced.
I also have to agree with some of the other reviews that the story appeared unpolished. Each point in the plot was just listed one after another and the connections to string them together were missing.
The protagonist’s flashbacks to Ancient Egypt are vicariously thrown into the mix, sometimes I didn’t know what was going on.
The Verdict
Overall, as I said before, this story had a lot of potential. I just think it wasn’t ready for publication just yet.
A few more edits and a little polish would have made a great difference.
