The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

This is going to be a bummer review to write. It is with great sadness that I tell you I was unable to finish this book.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not get into this book. The premise had promise (a book about a book!), it's a well-respected author, and I was excited for the release. But I just couldn't do it. Could barely get to page 100, which is my standard for giving a book a solid try. Really, if you can't hook me from the very first page or chapter, it will be hard to get me later on.

So what went wrong? The writing was good enough, though I have not read anything else by Wasserman to compare it to. The characters were interesting, too, though I felt completely distanced from them right from the beginning. I think maybe there was just not enough action to start things off. The pace moved too slow. Or there wasn't enough exposition to keep me hooked on the Chris or Nora enough to care about them when there was the little bit of action that occurred. For such a lengthy book, I personally needed more to get me started than what was provided.

Has anyone else experienced this? Please let me know!

Overall Rating: 2 Stars