Review: A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer

Title: A Curse So Dark and Lonely
Author: Brigid Kemmerer
Publish Date: January 29th, 2019

"Fall in love, break the curse. Cursed by a powerful enchantress to repeat the autumn of his eighteenth year, Prince Rhen, the heir of Emberfall, thought he could be saved easily if a girl fell for him. But that was before he turned into a vicious beast hell-bent on destruction. Before he destroyed his castle, his family, and every last shred of hope.
Nothing has ever been easy for Harper. With her father long gone, her mother dying, and her brother constantly underestimating her because of her cerebral palsy, Harper learned to be tough enough to survive. When she tries to save a stranger on the streets of Washington, DC, she's pulled into a magical world.
Break the curse, save the kingdom. Harper doesn't know where she is or what to believe. A prince? A curse? A monster? As she spends time with Rhen in this enchanted land, she begins to understand what's at stake. And as Rhen realizes Harper is not just another girl to charm, his hope comes flooding back. But powerful forces are standing against Emberfall . . . and it will take more than a broken curse to save Harper, Rhen, and his people from utter ruin."


StoryLine: Conflicted on this one. There were times where I was very much into it. But there were also times that completely pulled me out of the story.
At first it was writing; some lines were so awkwardly written and juvenile and in stark contrast to the rest of the writing. This got better with time.
Then it was pacing, the first half of the book or so takes place in only a few days, but if it weren’t for the random call backs to how little time has elapsed I would believe it had been at least a few weeks. It didn’t feel like a bunch had happened in such a short period of time, like I can only assume the author intended, but instead like the author rewrote the time frame after the fact. It belittled the growth of the characters and their relationships. Time speed up after around the halfway point, and at times time would jump ahead weeks. This was more inline with how the first half felt it was going.

Characters: Another thing that threw me with this book was the non-platonic relationship between two characters, which I didn’t realize was supposed to be of a potentially romantic nature until told to us 75% of the way in. Until then the two characters were a great example of a purely platonic but still loving friendship. The decision to suddenly to casually throw the “yeah there’s sparks” thing cheapened it for me.

As for the characters themselves, I really liked both Harper and Grey. Rhen was just so-so for me. I found his whole persona a little exhausting.

Parting Thoughts: I really did enjoy the story and the characters and the rep. So even though I had problems, I decided to rate this 4 stars because I did still enjoy it.

4/5 Stars