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| Book Cover from Amazon.com |
Opinion
Are you following KL Thorn on Twitter? No? Well, you should. She’s one of the #writerscommunity members there, and I enjoy her comments in my feed. KL came to me from my blog and asked me to read and review her book honestly. I’m happy to do so. The review I present is as always my opinion, and I hope you all enjoy the review.
To begin with, we shall go into my first impressions of the book. To do that, I want to hearken all of you who will read "Lost in Love" back to days of old. Think Hatfield's and McCoy’s style vengeance, the kind of thing where others have been fighting so long, perhaps no one remembers or cares why. Think Romeo and Juliet, star crossed lovers caught in a web of vengeance that effects the entire world, not just one or two families. With of all those stories where one side was entirely against another team, and consider what that means to a tale. Now take that, add an intricate world-building setting, fantasy systems, and magic, and you have a heck of a premise. We have a story of adventure, action, and like I said some romance. There’s a decent dollop of lust through the pages, but mostly this is an interesting take on the plot-line of forbidden love. This story is fun, but it’s not a kids story, I assure you. For every bit of magical beauty, comes something nasty and terrible, and I don't mean sex I mean violence, racism, and weighty topics. For those of you who balk at cuss words, there are some, and there is sex as well. I neither add nor detract from the score of a book if it has sex or cussing, but I am noting it. You may like that, or you may not, whatever the case is, I'm letting you know it is there.
Let’s move toward the critiques for “Lost in Love,” and they come in the form of two things. The first one I have has to do with pacing from the “Story, Structure, Foundation and Presentation” section of my critique. Most of the story revolves around romance, a capture situation, and the makings of a possible war or battle plot between two sides. While this is a good premise, the lusty bits sometimes get in the way of logic for me, especially when it concerns the actual climax of the book and the ending. What it does for the pacing is make some parts slower than others, and what I mean specifically, the lusty bits read faster than some of the rest of the book. There also is more romantic tension in the book than there is dynamic tension, which is exciting but it makes the plot devices move rhythmically different than the romance. Now, there is a positive side effect to that, and by having the romantic tension so high, the idea of the pair getting caught by someone while they frolic did come to mind more than once. This adds a bit more to the story in these sections and made it fun.
The second critique falls in my “Whole Story” section of scoring. “Lost in Love” doesn’t tell a complete beginning, middle and ending to the story that was opened up and presented. Without going into spoiler details, the premise of the story is a mission to capture someone and bring them back for questioning to stop or perhaps start a more significant conflict. Unfortunately, the ending that the story had been hammering toward didn’t happen. My assumption given how the story did end, is that something happens that will be significant for the next book. That’s not a bad thing, because I did like the story that was presented, just I am noting it did not read to me as though it was completed for this portion of the series.
Now for the part of the review where I let you know what I truly enjoyed about “Lost in Love.” The Magic system that was developed for healing is fantastic. There was a lot of time and effort put into it, and I found where it was added to the story was remarkable. I truly believe that magic systems can become too complicated for stories, but in this case, it works well, and it was well executed.
The next major positive element to the story the actual book is easy to read and comfortable on the eyes. There are natural pauses and breaks that a reader can enjoy stopping to take a break or get some tea and come back. The line spacing, the margins, the punctuation, and grammar are beautiful. There isn’t anything that bends or detracts the eyes. This was nice on my eyeballs to read!
Storywise, the subplots, especially the ones concerning the sister, the king, and the prince are done very well. Additionally, the actual antagonist of the tale is ruthless, and I enjoyed the element of what that character will do to others in the story. I also loved that there were real stakes to the conflicts going on. Descriptions of the appearance of the characters are detailed, but not overly detailed where you are bored. The fact that KL gave me an image to truly enjoy in my mind of every character was commendable and appreciated.
I also want to take a moment to go into the world building. It’s a positive thing in my most humble of opinions, when a writer puts a lot of work into the conflict and how that came from the world building. I can tell there was a whole lot of time and effort placed into every aspect of the of behind the scenes work. The world that is presented is expansive and lovely. I enjoyed the way the beginning explained things, and I liked the play of how politics and conflict come together for the overall dynamic plot. That’s a great thing when it comes to characters that are developed out of a world that is immersing.
Lastly, and I feel so very important, I loved the contrast in culture descriptions, I enjoyed the way that even the names felt appropriate to one side or another. This was very well done. I felt the conflict from page one, and it lasted through the book.
Score
“Lost in Love” is a magical book, so it has earned a score of 88/100 which is a 4-star review on Amazon and Goodreads! If you need some love, magic, and adventure in your reading, consider picking this up! It’s enjoyable!
Until next time my friends, this is Mrs. Y signing off.
