Holly Anne
Self-Published
13 February 2026
187
eBook - EPUB
Romantasy
ARC via NetGalley
To be loved by death is a curse sealed by blood…
In a world where curses reign and death lurks around every corner, Valeria McCallister finds herself bound to a monstrous fate. Forced into a marriage that promises only despair, her life is shattered when a blood-soaked stranger rips her from her doomed path.
To survive, Valeria must uncover her captor’s true name, the only hope for escape from the spectral castle that holds her captive. As she delves deeper into darkness and shadows of long dead secrets, she finds not the beast she expected.
With each passing moment, the lines between good and evil blur, and Valeria finds herself falling for the one creature she should most fear.
In the Midnight Garden was a book that, from the blurb, I was ready to get behind. Who could resist a vampires-meets-fairytales vibe? Unfortunately, despite an inspired premise, this book fell down on execution. It's incredibly rare for me to DFN a book (so rare I can count the number of times I have done so on one hand), but I did stop this one at the 40% mark. As it was a review copy, I really wanted to give it a fair go and try to push on to the end, but it was so difficult for me that I couldn't make myself continue. I am a qualified editor, and therefore it was gruelling for me when every paragraph was riddled with incorrect grammar and punctuation, and words clearly missing from sentences. The prose jumped tenses frequently in a confusing way, and the pacing was all over the place. This was clearly more than just a handful of typos that would be picked up and corrected before final release; this book was badly in need of a really good edit. In addition to those issues, I found the characters and world building underdeveloped. I couldn't decide if it was purely a fantasy world or meant to be an historical setting. I thought the latter at first, but there were too many anachronisms if that was the case. With so many issues clamouring for my attention on every page, I found myself unable to keep going after an initial hour reading the book. I accept that my review is based solely on 40% of the whole; however, on what I read in that 40%, I can really only give 2 stars, and that's because the premise had so much potential. If the author got a good editor involved and fixed the issues, I do think there is room to make something good from this idea.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment