Into the Forest discussion

This thread is for the winner of our January 15-March 14 African/African American themed group read winner Will Do Magic for Small Change by Andrea Hairston spoilers are allowed!

Well, it started out so well. I hoped I would love it, but my response was more ambivalent.

See my review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Shomeret wrote: "Well, it started out so well. I hoped I would love it, but my response was more ambivalent.

See my review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

I felt similarly. This book has so much potential! There is history, West African mythology,folklore and religion and an interesting caste of characters, both in the African and American tale.
But like you Shomeret, I found parts tedious, never to the point I considered abandoning the book, but still!
As I said in the other thread I found parts very confusing and a lot was difficult for me to visualize.
This could be as you said: "One of the perennial problems with the writing was telling readers about events through dialogue instead of showing us these events as they happened so that readers can experience them"
Another Goodreads reviewer wrote this which is also how I experienced it : "it's not an easy read for visual readers. It’s all herky-jerky with no sense of space, time, or flow which is funny since it’s about space, time, and flow. "

That being said I really felt for Cinnamon and liked her teen trio :Cinnamon, Klaus and Marie! And her grandparents!

I wished there was more about Redwood and Aidan and Iris! We are left with a lot of questions about them! They are the stars in Hairson's previous 2012 novel Redwood and Wildfire and it looks like a lot of their history as well as their powers (Redwoods "Lightning hand" might be elaborated on. I think I will read it sooner than later to get a more complete picture ( hopefully) .

That reminds me, I still don't understand what happened to Marie's hand?

Sometimes I have to wait awhile and read something else inbetween to decide about how I feel about a book.
In this case when I finished it I liked it but wasn't like "wow".
I started Akata Witch immediately after and it's just so much better written that now when I look back on this one I just kind of feel meh.
It's really too bad, but reading the two books back to back just really made the writing in this one look weak.