I wanted to love this book so badly, especially because it has DRAGONS in it and I love dragons! But sadly, we never hit it off.I really struggled with Lora as a main character, I couldn't connect to her and I actually didn't think she was a very nice person. I get that growing up the way she did, she had to be tough, but I don't know, something in her attitude just rubbed me the wrong way. I think this goes along way to my disconnect from the story in general, because I couldn't find myself rooting for her.
And seriously, I'm a bit tired of the love triangle always popping up. Lora, who never really had anything, now all of a sudden has two attractive boys running after her and there's insta-love going on with one of them and I don't know, it just did not work for me at all. Maybe also partly because I was rooting for the boy she didn't have the insta-love with, he seemed a far more interesting character than either Lora or Jesse. Though seriously, please stop having his pet name be Mandy, because UGH THAT IS JUST NOT MANLY OK?!
Ahem.
I did like the dragon- and starlore and thought these abilities that Lora has could have been expanded on aside from her turning to smoke and turning up somewhere else naked (a lot). I was fascinated by her ability to command people using her powers and then it just vanished. I would have loved to see her grow a bit more into all of it and just play around for a while.
I do have to say that the writing was beautiful, Shana Abe really knows how to turn a sentence. But it wasn't engaging and her characters weren't relatable and it all just fell a bit flat for me. I really ahd to push myself to finish The Sweetest Dark and wasn't even all that devastated at something that happens towards the end, which if I had been truly invested in this story, I surely would have been.
My rating: 2 stars
Made me crave: nacho cheese tortillas