Roar (Stormheart, #1)

by Cora Carmack

[nannah]

Oh, boy. I’m sorry, but this book was a hot mess. There was very little that I enjoyed, and I was very surprised to find out this wasn’t the author’s first book--but not surprised to find out she was an adult romance writer before trying her hand at YA.

Book content warnings:
In-book (?) sexism/misogyny
Manipulation & sexual assault & harassment by the romantic interest--played off to be “”sexy”” (it’s called out by the protag but in the romantic interest’s mind it’s justified and never really brought up again …)

Arora (Rora, Roar--the nicknames are RIDICULOUS; Casimir→ Mir? MIR??) Pavan is a Stormling: a member of a royal family that help protect civilians from the deadly and beast-like storms that have ravaged the entire world. Only Stormlings have the power to fight and kill these storms … right? Except that Arora doesn’t. And when she meets a team of storm hunters in the black market and learns that you actually don’t have to have Stormling blood to fight storms, her entire world gets turned upside down.

It’s an interesting concept, but the execution falls flat. There’s so much “telling” instead of “showing” in important places. For example the author tells me what everyone intends to do or what their actions mean, making everything seem cheap instead of meaningful. There’s also a lot of sloppy editing: commas in the wrong places (especially where there shouldn’t be any), weird sentence structures, and overall just inconsistent style. Where’s the editor in all this? Especially when Arora got knocked out by a bottle. You can’t get knocked out by a bottle without brain damage or dying! It doesn’t work that way! That’s like … writing cliches 101.

I also found it really hard to enjoy the romance between the two main characters. The love interest, Locke, practically harassed and sexually assaulted Roar (aka Arora) a couple times, and besides the first time (which I’m glad Roar called him out), it was taken to be “sexy” and sexy banter. Especially since, according to Locke’s inner monologue, he doesn’t really see what he did as wrong. Worse yet, after he assaults her one time, he emotionally manipulates her so that he can pretend it was part of her storm-hunting “training”. Badly done! He even admits this later: “I’m an ass who gets what he wants.” I don’t know why people find this hot. It’s not hot!

Lovely man. Just what we want teens to look for in relationships, lmao!

The writing in the romantic parts was also … pretty awful. This was where I could tell the author was an adult romance writer before she came to YA territory. Everything was “Manly this” and “Manly that” -- Roar has one hand touch her body and she’s all theirs, and “better yet, she had stopped fighting him completely”, and “to fall back on another argument would give her the precious distance she needed”. Good lord. This is why I read more LGBT books lately; I can’t deal with straight drama (that, and well, I’m not straight.).

There was also the fact that 200 pages in, I was still learning who the secondary characters were. “An earth witch, her enchantments were the strongest he’d ever seen, thanks to her affinity to nature, of which storms were a part.” OH MY GOD. 1). I know this already. 2). This is SUCH boring writing; it’s like listing facts in a nonfiction paper.

Around the 200 page point things really get sloppy. This is where the plot actually begins. There’s finally a protagonist goal and a villain introduction! And it’s during this point the PoV’s become messy; like in one you’ll have a sentence that’s supposed to be another’s … like the author missed it, but decided not to backtrace and put it in the other’s so just plopped it in this one instead. There’s kissing instead of sorting out anger (not a writing issue, but a bad understanding of who she’s writing for and maybe how she should represent to the people she’s writing for). Along the same lines, the protagonist bases her self esteem on if a cool guy likes her--and there’s no questioning of that line of thinking. You’re writing a book for teens (and most likely teen girls), and that’s what you present to them??

And then page 342 -- just THREE CHAPTERS from the end I finally learn the villain’s name and about who he actually is?

Then the book ends … without a climax.. It just ends. There’s no climax, no resolution, there’s just … nothing. It ends just as … like I was on page 150 or something.

The storms are an idea that’s pretty interesting, but I honestly Could Not Stand this book, and only read it all because of a friend. I’m so sorry, but it’s Definitely not for me.