A College Syllabus I Didn't Sign Up For
Lord help me I just did not like this whether it be because it was book two in a series or the writing style. This was just not for me I think this might be my first our second one star review this year. Again I am so so sorry this is for someone just not I.
To be fair, I went into this without reading book one, but the issues here went far beyond missing context. The story is heavily dialogue-driven, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but every conversation is between characters who are painfully pretentious and unlikable. Every other line is a smug reference to Dumas or Hemingway, or a joke about the Aeneid. If anyone actually talks like this in real life, I’ll be staying far away. We get it, Lily King: you’re well-read. It felt like a challenge to see how many literary allusions could fit into 200 pages, constantly derailing what could have been natural, relatable dialogue.
What’s stranger is that despite all the namedropping, the prose itself felt surprisingly simplistic—almost like YA fiction. Instead of letting the story breathe, King over-explains every single thought, feeling, and action, leaving zero room for reader interpretation.
I just wanted joy and got a book that I feel like was forced on me to analyze in college. Man, I should really learn that DNFing a book is okay.
