All That Glows (All That Glows, #1)

by Ryan Graudin

[ladygrey]

This was close to being 2.5 stars. It's not that it's a bad book, it's just not a great book either. Emrys was a decent enough character (great name), tough sometimes and insecure others which is a lot of YA heroines. Richard was interesting in that he was so adaptable to the world he discovered and he accepted it well. But neither really hooked me into loving the story or them. The world borrows from all sorts of fairy lore. Some of the King Arthur stuff was mildly interesting and a lot of it felt common; one more version of Mab that's only slightly different than the others I've read before.

The prose was intended to be flowery and interesting. Maybe it was my mood the day I read it, but it didn't strike me as being as wonderful as it hoped to be. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it felt like it was trying too hard. A lot of times it explained things vaguely and other times it repeated information I didn't need explained again. The pacing also was off. The plot seems to disappear in the middle of the book while they're falling in love (spoiler!) and then come sputtering back while the romance hits the sidelines. I'd have liked to see both more evenly integrated with one another.

But it's easy to pick up the flaws in a book and make it seem worse than it was, because it wasn't awful. It kept me reading through 463 pages - there was curiosity and the progression of the relationships and the characters that nicely filled a few hours on a Sunday.