Girls Made of Snow and Glass (3 stars)-Not bad, but I started to get bored halfway through the book. Liked both characters points of views (Mina and Lynet), but I started wanting the story to go faster. I liked the idea of these two characters really wanting the other to be more (Lynet wanting Mina to be her mother and Mina wanting to be Lynet’s mother) and them being pulled apart by terrible men. But, after you keep reading, the book falls apart. I think honestly the biggest problem was that for a good portion of the book, Bashardoust just jumps back to Mina’s upbringing, how she got brought to the kingdom, and how she tried to entice Lynet’s father to marry her. The present storyline started to drag after a while and you wanted to yell, just get on with things.
The House Across the Lake (2 stars)-Honestly I have to stop reading Sager. After a while the books just fall apart. I don’t know if he can’t thread the needle on horror and fantasy or what. But this book when you start reading, you start seeing too many holes in the story. I think at one point after we get to a whole [redaction] storyline I was fast losing interest. And then it just felt like things were not explained and at that point I just kept going with it so I could put this one down.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (1 star)-I just didn’t like this. I tried so hard to press through and did finish. But I had a lot of stop and starts on this one. I feel bad but this was endless and not very good. I started skimming in self defense. Loved her prior works and this was just a drag and I was bored throughout. Should have DNFed. I do like that she plays with Gothic elements in her works, but a good quarter of this book could have been cut, and nothing would have been lost.