Greenteeth

Greenteeth

I liked Jenny's voice, but felt like she was a letdown in terms of a monster protagonist. I wanted a little more bite to her, and in the end felt like she was very nice to everyone she came across.

it was a 3 out of 5 stars for me. The frustrating part was that, for the first ~50 pages or so, I really thought it was going to a stellar read. ... I also didn't expect the plot to mostly be various fetch quests. It wasn't a bad read, and I ended up gifting my copy to a friend who has been reading a lot of cozy fantasy with hopes that they'll enjoy it. Unfortunately, it just didn't come together for me.

I was surprised by how in-depth the climax went on and how dark it got, given the cozy marketing and how predictable the book had been up to that point. ... I do think though that the cozy marketing cut the tension of this whole encounter because you know Jenny isn’t really turning evil and Temperance isn’t really dead, even though the author was decently convincing about it in the text. I think I’d have preferred a version of this book where she beefed up the middle and didn’t call it cozy.

the whole middle/the quest has no tension or momentum, it’s not even merely “predictable” so much as the whole thing is telegraphed and then plays out exactly as forecast, no surprises or deviations or unexpected threats. And the characters are pretty surface level—there’s friendship and bonding but no real emotional depth. So I do see where the “cozy” label is doing the marketing some good, although I didn’t particularly get warm fuzzies from it—outside of the beginning and the climax I was mostly just bored.

I did like their friendship. However, I wish the author actually showed them reconciling after their fight, rather than them just returning as if it never happened.

I'm luke warm. It was not bad, but it didn't really stood out for me much.