Title: All Our Pretty Songs
Author: Sarah McCarry
Genre/s: Young Adult, Paranormal Fantasy, Mythology
Synopsis:
The first book in an exciting YA trilogy, this is the story of two best friends on the verge of a terrifying divide when they begin to encounter a cast of strange and mythical characters.
Set against the lush, magical backdrop of the Pacific Northwest, two inseparable best friends who have grown up like sisters—the charismatic, mercurial, and beautiful Aurora and the devoted, soulful, watchful narrator—find their bond challenged for the first time ever when a mysterious and gifted musician named Jack comes between them. Suddenly, each girl must decide what matters most: friendship, or love. What both girls don’t know is that the stakes are even higher than either of them could have imagined. They’re not the only ones who have noticed Jack’s gift; his music has awakened an ancient evil—and a world both above and below which may not be mythical at all. The real and the mystical; the romantic and the heartbreaking all begin to swirl together, carrying the two on journey that is both enthralling and terrifying.
And it’s up to the narrator to protect the people she loves—if she can.
My Thoughts:
All Our Pretty Songs is more of a cacophony of noise rather than a pretty melodic song. There were a lot of unnecessary flashbacks and ramblings in this book that I felt like I was bombarded with too much information and the story was being compromise to show the authors skill in creating lyrical prose. It was a huge disappointment for me.
To be honest, I don't know how I'm going to create my own summary of what this book is about. All I know is that Aurora and the narrator were best friends and then gorgeous musician, Jack came into the picture and everything changed. That's all I got! I didn't finish this book and I totally felt relieved because of it. I've never read anything as confusing as this. And how can the author expect me to relate to her narrator when I don't even know her name. It makes me feel like a bystander who was suddenly stopped by a total stranger just to info-vomit on me. Sorry for the graphic image but that is seriously how I felt while reading this book.
The characters were infuriatingly annoying. Also, the two girls were supposed to be inseparable base on the blurb but I found out that our devoted and watchful narrator wasn't as devoted and as watchful as she was stated. She, repeatedly, left Aurora with some random guy, drunk and wasted at some party. Now tell me, is that what you called best friend. Well, some best friend, huh?
The prose in this book was well-written. I won't deny, a lot of them were amazing. But you know the feeling when you ate too much sweet and then your teeth started to ache. Well that's how I felt. This book was overdosed with lyrical prose(yay, that rhymes) and it doesn't have a coherent storyline structure to balance it out.
Overall, this is the first book that I rated with only one star and in my rating system that means it’s a waste of time. I'm not happy about this rating but I have to do what I have to do.
My Rating
