[Review] Cursed Under London by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Light and playful tone with a good amount of whimsy. I loved the assortment of supernatural creatures, and I really adored the dragon, Amber.

Outside of that, I had a number of issues with this book. Despite an interesting premise, this book rambles...a lot. Some parts were so haphazard and unfocused that I completely zoned out. There were also areas that felt overly abrupt—like an idea was dropped on the page and then abandoned before being fully realized.

Generally, there was a lot going on—lots of action, adventure and intrigue—which normally would be great. But, in the case of this book, it was too much. The almost continual onslaught of action felt shallow and the characters lacked development. It's hard to care about the plight of a character that you don't care about.

Lastly, the writing felt subpar. It was clunky and unpolished. There were numerous grammatical errors. Lack of sufficient punctuation. Overly long and conflated sentences. Just generally hard to read.

Good ideas, but I wasn't a fan of the execution.

Note: I received this book as an ARC. It is scheduled to be released July 4, 2024.

3 stars