I have just now come to the conclusion yesterday that Tessa Gratton is hit or miss for me. I was SO excited for Moon Dark Smile. The pitch absolutely appealed to me. Come on, Laini Taylor is one of the comps. And previously I had really enjoyed Blood Magic. It turns out, however, that Moon Dark Smile was a miss for me. I don’t know if it is due to the book itself or to some outside factors.
Moon Dark Smile is a companion novel to Night Shine. Going into this, I had not previously read Night Shine. I am not really sure if that context was necessary. However, this book follows Raliel Dark Smile, who is the Heir. She leaves the Palace to go on a journey throughout the kingdom. The alleged purpose is to meet the people of the kingdom she will be ruling, but honestly she really goes because she wants to find a way to free the Palace demon named Moon who has come with her. Additionally, a guard comes with her — Osian — who is demon kissed – meaning he has a special ability. Raliel might not actually be able to trust Osian though.
One great thing about this book is that it does have a lot of gender diversity. There’s gender fluid characters and transgender characters. Representation occurs within this book. However. The pacing of this book was SO SLOW. It would take me an hour to get through 20 pages and normally I can knock that out in like 10 minutes. Admittedly, I read this while home alone for the week with my young children. So, yes, there were distractions but at the same time, I started a new book and am just flying through it under the same circumstances. I found that I didn’t really care for any of the characters. I had a tough time picturing what was going on. It is so wonderful people will see themselves reflected in this book, but for me, Moon Dark Smile was not exactly my favorite.
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