Review: To Best the Boys by Mary Weber

I was so sure that I would love this book. As I adore this author, and have been waiting for this one for so long. Cover is beautiful. And the summary was exciting too. So I felt sure this book would be for me. But oh, how wrong I was. I have ended up giving it two stars. And I sadly don't have many positive things to say about it.

I feel so sad that I was so disappointed by this book. It was truly not a book for me. It annoyed me from start to finish. Was mostly because of the writing, which I never got used to. Was so messy. And it was filled with words I have never ever seen before, words that did not fit in, at least not in ways I could see. Was distracting.

I do not know how much I feel like sharing about this book. Not very much. And sadly not many positive things at all. Two stars, because I did not hate it. But I did not like it either. Honestly, this whole book was a struggle to read. I wanted to love it. So much. And I tried. But it did not get better. The writing never improved. The story was messy. The book was also too short. It was only three hundred pages, with barely anything happening at all. The labyrinth part was only one fourth of this book. What. I was expecting it to be so much more in this book. More scary, more challenging. Instead it happened in a few hours. It was boring, to be completely honest. First there was a whole day before the maze, which truly lasted forever, and was all kinds of boring. Sigh.

This book tells the story of Rhen. She lives in a world where girls are supposed to be wives and the boys go to school and take care of the family that way. This could have been interesting to read about, but I felt like it was not done well enough. It wasn't exciting enough, not important enough. I did not feel at all that Rhen wanted to change things. All she wanted was for her mom to not die. This was not a book about a girl wanting to change the world of men deciding everything. Which I had thought that it would be about.

I sort of liked Rhen. At times. I simply did not feel like she had any personality at all. The book begins with her robbing a dead body of blood, making it explode. Which was just gross. It spends more than a third of this book just explaining her daily life. Including the boy that wants to court her, whom is actually a creep. Of course. And the quiet boy, Lute, that she has been secretly in love with for years. Whom now seems to like her too, and is acting very jealous yet she does not see it. There was some unnecessary drama. Ugh.

We learn a lot about Rhen. Except not really, as I never felt like I truly knew or understood her. I did not connect with her. I did not feel anything for her. Her family seemed sweet, I simply did not care. Her best friend was her cousin, Seleni. I did enjoy their strong friendship. And I liked this girl too, and the boy she was in love with. He was pretty much so adorable. But that was also pretty much all that I liked about this book. There were moments that I enjoyed reading, which I was pleased about, but they were way too few.

I do not know what to say about this book. And so I will not say that much about it. I thought it would be all about the maze and the competition. It wasn't. It was more about silly boys and drama between them and the main girl only wanting to save her mother. It ended way too fast, with too many open endings. I felt like this book should have been so much more. Sigh. It was disappointing to me. I wanted more from it all. I wanted more excitement. I wanted more story, more plot. More romance, more characters. More.

This book was kind of a mess. It kept trying to be everything at once, and failed at all of it. At least for me. There were deadly sirens, deadly ghosts. Magic mentioned that no one had. A deadly virus that had the most silly reason for being. A supposedly scary maze that lasted for about one fourth of the book. So very disappointing. A romance that could have been good, but was not done well enough. For me, this whole book felt ordinary. When I had been expecting something truly unique. It could have been so much more.

And because of that, I did not like this book very much. I had so many issues with it. I wanted to love it the most. But it was simply impossible. I adore Mary. I really do. But this book of hers was not for me. At all. And I do suppose many will love it, though I do not really understand why. For me, this book was too little. Too little of everything. To Best the Boys had the chance to be amazing. But for my part, it failed. It do look all kinds of gorgeous, though. But yes. I'm left feeling so disappointed in this, which is the worst.

Goodreads - The Book Depository - Amazon