Dumpster Fire Review- The Scattered Bones (WITH THE WRITTEN REVIEW SORRY IM AN OLD LADY THAT DOESN'T UNDERSTAND REDDIT)

My First Post didn't include any of the actual review. SO HERE's THE REVIEW

Just go ahead and get out your pitchforks now, because I know this book has been getting a lot of love on here lately, but love is not what I will be giving in this review 😅

Short review: Poppy Balfour, the maiden… oops I mean Sellah the Chosen (they’re literally the same) is a virgin set aside for a goddess to posses. Unfortunately she falls in love and her mans gets cut up into pieces and has his bones scattered across the realm. She goes on a Zelda quest that feels more like a really vague, really bad mushroom trip, with a hot stranger with white eyes and mind power (but he’s totally JUST a stranger and not a powerful entity or god or anything) to gather her lovers bones in order Frankenstein that bitch back to life.

I’ll start with what I liked:

  • The premise: Gathering your lovers bones and going to the edge of the world for them? That shit is freaking romantic. Sign me up. Love this if literally anyone else wrote it.
  • The dismemberment scene: I’ll always hand it to an author that goes there, this was brutal. I liked it.
  • Friends to lovers: I’m telling you, friends to lovers is where it’s at, it’s such an underrated trope.

What I disliked:

  • Told not shown: you know how there’s scenes where authors will tell you and not show you? You know how frustrating that is? Okay now imagine that the ENTIRE book you are told everything and literally almost never shown. Not scenes here and there, but the ENTIRE book is in a flashback telling format. First person past tense for half the book and the other half first person present tense but she’s on her weird vague quests so not much better.
  • The repetition: you think JL Armentrout is repetitive? We’ve got a new champ. Is saying “my child” 52 times from a side character too many? Asking for a friend. I’m convinced if the author didn’t repeat multiple times each chapter that: She was chosen since birth, she’s the vessel, She’s never seen another man, Her parents didn’t show any affection (specifically her mother ) that this book would be 100 pages long.
  • Over explanations: when it comes to foreshadowing/dropping hints some authors give you a crumb and then drop kick you off a cliff to figure it out yourself. Some authors hold your hand and guide you on the path. This author? This is a helicopter author that will force feed you the obvious so thick and so frequent that you won’t even be able to roll your eyes because she’s still hammering home the points she wants to make. 
  • The romance: the premise of this book was romantic but the actual execution wasn’t. I could not believe their love because I wasn’t shown anything, just told. This is the first man this bish literally has ever seen (except her brothers and dad, but don’t worry you’ll only be explained that like 30 times) and we are told she just told she starts to feel things, strong things, but like this dude doesn’t DO anything. He’s just there. He’s just Ken.
  • The dialogue: this was just cringe to me… and I can’t put my finger on it, except for it kind of reminded me of how I made my Barbies talk to each other when I was a kid. You know that weird pretend pretentious dialogue when you’re trying to be more grown up than you are? Like that. Like she was trying to write simplistically but profound like in The Alchemist, but it did not work. 
  • Behind the scenes: so much of what is foundational and important for this plot are things that clearly happen off page and then are just explained in one or two sentence. Fake example: “oh while you were asleep an army fought on your behalf, we won you can relax now”. 
  • The plot: it doesn’t follow its own rules. She’s not allowed to have outside help (it will be repeated 100 times)on her quests. She has quite a lot of outside help.

In all, not my favorite, wouldn’t even say I liked it. The over described, repetitive, and first person narration is just not for me, I like my books with a little more subtleness and mystery. I finished this one through stubborn determination and aggressive skimming.

On to the next book while the season is still spooky: Song of The Darkwood