Reviews

This is the companion to Clara und das Glück dieser Erde. I think the story of this one is not part of the ZDF Christmas TV series, but I’m not sure since I haven’t watched that series yet. After the first novel, I was quite wary about this one. Well, what can I say, this book drove me crazy … as indicated by all the swearing. I’m terribly sorry but I just had to vent my emotions.

I’m not sure of what I’d heard first: the book or the ZDF Christmas series from the same year. I still haven’t seen the series and right now, I’m not so sure if I still want to. I probably will if I get my hands on it one day, but the book really put me off for the time being. Gah, and I had my hopes up!

The novel begins with a trope and a lovely spin on it: There are new horses arriving at the stable, but not just any horses! Oh no, these two are stunt horses! Protagonist Zoe is not impressed though and that’s what I love about her. She’s worried about their well-being and eyes the training very suspiciously …

I was introduced to Jenny Hughes via the PonyClub, a horse themed subscription box service/publisher. However, we’ve got a rather mixed track record – the fourteen books I’d previously read ranging from one to five star reads. The ones I liked were pretty great, though, so I started buying the books that hadn’t been published in German. This is one of them, and I’m so very glad I did!

A Drop of Night held many surprises: it wasn’t at all what I expected; it got my giddy, thrilled, and for most parts glued to the pages, and it left me quite unsatisfied. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it, since most of the flaws only occurred to me afterwards …

A heroine set out for revenge; a dark and mysterious, more or less evil love interest; dragons known as Dracyr – this should have been just my kind of YA high fantasy romance novel. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Granted, it didn’t take me long to get into the novel and at first, I inhaled it – until I put it down. The more I thought about what I’d read, the more difficult it became to get myself to continue. The concept of the Dracyr is very cool, but that’s about the only redeeming quality of the novel. Not only was I disappointed that the protagonist was a far cry from the kickass assassin I’d expected, the romance had me cringe and my skin crawl …

What the hell?! I’m still baffled and it hurts my soul to write this since Lynn Raven is one of my favourite authors, but in my humble opinion, this novel is a disaster! Seelenkuss reads like a first draft in need of heavy editing with a plot all over the place, characters so flat they’re almost translucent, and world building that had me scratching my head …