Thursday, August 14, 2014

Dangerous Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

1 Star
 
SOME SPOILAGE ENSUES
You might be asking yourself: “Self, why would a person who gave a 1 Star review to Beautiful Creatures even bother reading Dangerous Creatures?” Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s ‘cause I’m a giver. I read the worst of the worst so you don’t have to. Actually, that’s not really true. Although I really hated Beautiful Creatures, I found it to have one redeeming quality:



Oh wait a second – make that two redeeming qualities. When I read Ethan’s character I pictured Phillip Phillips (my brain is weird . . . and AWESOME) and those made for some pretty decent moments.



Sidenote #1: Then they cast the movie (seriously, why the hell was Beautiful Creatures EVER considered interesting enough to be made into a movie) with a guy who looked like Leonardo DiCaprio and Phillip Phillips had a baby. DELIGHTFUL!



Okay, back on track now. When I saw there was a new book (I’m ignoring the fact that this is the start of yet another bloody series in order to keep my brain from exploding), I thought I’d give it a shot to see if I liked Ridley’s story more than I liked Lena’s. (I also received an e-mail offering me an ARC of this book in exchange for a review, so my sloth-like self did ZILCH as far as actively seeking out a copy.)

Dangerous Creatures started off okay. Ridley was full of piss and vinegar, and although Link wouldn’t ever be my first choice of boyfriend, their love/hate chemistry was kind of working. There was hope this would be filled with action and adventure and the focus on the “Dark” side of things had me intrigued . . .

“Casters don’t get to have fairy tales – especially not Dark Casters. Forget the sunset – the whole castle burns to the ground, taking Prince Charming down with it. Then the seven dwarves go all ninja and drop-kick your butt straight out of the kingdom.”

Sounds promising, right?

So, what happened? In short: NOTHING. Nothing happens. The whole premise is that Ridley lost a high stakes card game and now owes the house a marker – a favor that can be asked at any time forcing Ridley to do anything. But guess what? The marker is NEVER. FLIPPING. CASHED. IN. What happens instead, you ask? Well, we watch Ridley go from a kick-ass sassy Siren to a mealy-mouthed Mary Sue who worries about the state of her relationship with her boyfriend.


Sidenote #2: “The Amazing Spiderman” is on Starz on Demand and I cannot stop myself from watching it over and over again. You may grow sick of the excessive use of Andrew Garfield .gifs I’m sure to be using in the next few weeks.

Oh, and Ridley isn’t just pining for ol’ Link – she also develops feelings for super sexy bad boy Nox as well. Yay! Love triangles! Those hardly ever happen in YA books! (/end sarcasm) This one mixes things up just a bit because Ridley and Lincoln were “ON A BREAK!!!!!”(Ha! I kill me with the old “Friends” references) so introducing a potential new love interest is probably considered super different from all the other love triangle situations*eye roll*. If you couldn’t already tell, I’m annoyed in general by this overused plotline, but in this case I just kept thinking “any girl in their right mind would pick Nox over Link, so just STFU about it already.”

One day I will learn it’s A-Okay to not finish a book. I will also learn that if I don’t like the first series by an author(s), I probably won’t like the second either – especially when the “new” series is just a regurge of the original. Hopefully I will eventually learn that I need to keep my read-to-reviewed ratio on NetGalley a lot higher than I have been in order to not have to finish books I hate (so I can then request more books that I might hate – neverending vicious cycle this one is).



Yeah, you should be sorry, Will. Now hurry up and neuralize me so I can forget I tortured myself with this crap.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest (or in this case, brutally honest) review

No comments:

Post a Comment