by Natalie C. Anderson
rating: ☆☆
published: 6th July 2017
spoilers? nope
Goodreads
Galley provided by publisher
City of Saints and Thieves was one of my anticipated reads for this year. From the synopsis, the book sounded as though it had a lot of potential to be amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked.
Most of the problems I had stemmed from the fact that the author of this book is white, and writing about Kenyan and Congolese characters. I realise that she has worked with Congolese refugees in Kenya and everything, and that's where some of the background for this comes from, but it's very very obviously written by a white author. And because that's how it felt, I had trouble actually getting into this book, and couldn't really connect with any of the characters.
I also had issues with the actual plot. It's supposed to be a murder mystery kind of thing, but if we're honest, there's actually no real investigating done by the main characters. It's all sort of reading through police reports and mumbling about how they need to do x and y, and then they go to the tech whiz and he gets it for them in a flash. Then the reveal comes out of nowhere. They don't even get close to finding out who might be behind it. They have no idea, but the bad guy then reveals his hand by kidnapping them even though they don't know who he is until that point. For this to be an effective mystery, you have to at least have them uncovering something that points towards the culprit. Otherwise it feels like the author's just gone and added it in as an afterthought.
The rest of what annoyed me was mostly just the usual YA stereotypes - of course the main character is incredibly pretty, it's just not going to work as a book if she isn't, and of course the gay character is camp as hell just so he can be slight comic relief, and of courseshe's not like other girls (she actually said this. My eyes near on rolled out my skull). So yeah. It was disappointing to say the least.
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