Review: Forbidden

Title: Forbidden
Author: Kimberley Griffiths Little
Series: Forbidden
Volume: 1
Genre: Historical Fiction
Goodreads

A Quick Introduction: Jayden should be happy. She's engaged to the son of her tribal leader, which will bring her both power and riches, and restore her family's position. But instead, she fears that she's going to be entering a marriage without love, and possibly without safety- she doesn't trust her betrothed at all. When she meets Kadesh, a stranger from the south, she becomes convinced that she cannot go through with her marriage, despite the risks to both her and her family should she refuse.

Out of Ten: 2/10

Review at a Glance: With poor world-building, bountiful info-dumping, weak characterisation, and a completely flat romance, this story really didn't work for me.

Review: I didn't like this one. I think my biggest complaint was that there was absoloutely no sense of place. This book tells a story about rich and vibrant cultures with all of the charisma of a poorly edited, dry textbook. I am familiar with the concept of a desert, thanks.

 A major contributor to this is that the novel is rife with simply telling, rather than showing. There were paragraphs that just related information about locations and lifestyles, without actually giving any sense of what it must be like to live in said locations with said lifestyles. There were things that I could clearly tell were unrealistic in the context of the world and time period, for all the information provided.

The characters, which were... flat. This may partly have because the narrator and main character, Jayden, spent so much time being a vessel through which to infodump, but "flat" really is the best way I can think of to describe them. They seem more like over-described concepts than characters. The way that they speak feels incredibly stilted, the prose just feels unnatural an there isn't any flow. Couple that with the fact that none of them ever seemed to learn from their mistakes, and you have a recipe for frustrated boredom.

There was zero chemistry. I don't even think there was an attempt to create chemistry.  I had no idea why the characters were attracted to each other, and happened unrealistically fast. While I did feel some sympathy for Jayden's position (arranged to marry someone she fears) I didn't enjoy the direction it was taken and the way that story was told. It was just one part of a plot that was both unmemorable and scattered, and I didn't find myself interested.

Overall, this really wasn't the book for me. It fell down on just about every front, and I really don't think I'll be continuing with the series.