I’m gobsmacked.
I don’t know how, but I found this book lying on my bookshelf and I don’t even remember how it got there. The author’s name was familiar – I don’t remember from what exactly even now – but I was not looking forward to reading certain books on my TBR and decided to pick this one up instead.
What was I thinking?
Abby Tacker is grieving the loss of her mother when her life takes yet another turn. After being rescued from creatures made of smoke, she learns that they are after her because she is being hunted. A curse that has spanned across Three Worlds has targeted her as the next to die in her family’s bloodline unless she can hunt the hunter. But her cowardice leads her running from this problem until it bites her in the butt in the worst way possible.
Reading this book felt like an invasion of privacy. I literally am in the middle of writing a book with characters very similar to these ones. It was basically the backstory of these particular characters and I didn’t even realise. Not to mention that it felt like a mish mash of Men in Black, Shadowhunters, RWBY and Percy Jackson. How could so many shows combine into this?
And the plot was so predictable! I must be a psychic because I could literally tell what would happen next, how every character would react and even how the magic system worked before it was even explained. I have never experienced this with a book before. It’s predictability made it lose all the tension it should’ve had. It makes me so tempted to spoil the whole plot for you guys.
Now let’s get into the worldbuilding, the edgiest worldbuilding you’ve ever seen. The author decided to make up their own creatures – no elves, no dragons – which leaves so much in this world feeling foreign. Why would you do this? People look for familiarity in their fantasy books and this has none of it. I want a world I can connect with, and this isn’t it.
And the worst part is even though this book feels like plagiarism, I can’t sue the author. The author is me.
Aster’s Coda: Exposure gets a score of 5/5. Happy April Fools.
Yours in writing
Amy