But it was not. At least, not for me. I'm sure others will love this book. But I did not. And I will be sharing all my reasons for not loving this book, and those reasons might end up being many, and might be a little bit spoilery too. I give this book two stars. Because it had potential to be amazing. But it never got there.
There is so much I wish to share about this book. And figuring out how to put my words down will not be an easy thing, sadly. Because my mind is kind of a mess. I struggled through almost five hundred pages to finish this. I would have stopped reading, except it was a print ARC that I had traded for, and I wanted to give it a chance, hoping it would get better. It did not. Sigh. So yes. This book was almost five hundred pages. And yet I feel like I have very little to talk about in this review of mine. Because the plot was barely there. Pretty much nothing happened. No progress. No excitement. I am beyond disappointed in this story. I felt like it could have been so much more than it was. I do feel sorry for being so negative, but really must be honest too.
Because there were a few parts of this book that I actually liked a whole lot. Which is why it is a two star for me and not less. The world was incredible. The story of this place created was exciting. The fact that the land was dying and why and how it could be fixed was interesting. And I wanted to know more about it all. But I never got that. I never got more, and what I did get was way too little. And I am so upset about it. As this world building could have been so great, if only there had been more of it. Ugh. I needed more.
Instead the whole book is about two characters. Kunal and Esha. Told from both their point of views. I so wish I could say that I loved the writing. But I did not. It annoyed me from start to finish. I did not connect with either of the characters, and that just hurts. Sigh. I wanted to love them. But I did not. They truly did nothing that would make me love them, to be honest. I thought they would both be fierce and deadly and beyond awesome to read about. Neither of them were. Haha. They were both way too soft for me. What.
Which is something I pretty much never say, haha. I thought they would be broken and dangerous and a little soft deep inside. Instead they were pretty much not deadly at all and beyond soft, all on the outside as well. It bothered me. It made me not care for either of them. They were supposed to be broken. But I did not feel that they were. It was not shown what had happened to either of them. There was no tragic back story to read about. A supposed huge need for revenge, yet never shown why she wanted it. Sigh.
This book fell completely flat for me. And I am so unsure how to completely write down my feelings about everything. I wanted it to be so much more than it was. I wanted the plot to be exciting and big and full of danger. Instead I got two teenagers pretty much chasing each other and falling in love and always always thinking about how they had both changed for each other, despite just meeting. Ugh. It was not sweet, at least not to me. I did not feel any kind of spark towards them. No romantic tension. That made me so sad.
Not that there was a huge romance in this story. Because there was not. Kunal and Esha do have a little romance. But it was not epic and cute. I found it boring, to be honest. Why did he care so much for her? Ugh. And then, of course, they knew each other as children for a few short weeks. So now they must be in love. Yeah. No. Sorry, it was not written well enough. Not for me. I so wish I could say that I loved it all. I wish I could say that this book was incredible. But it really truly was not. I had to force myself to finish it.
But yes. There were parts of it that I liked. I liked the world, but it was too little of it. I have not mentioned the plot much, but yeah. Esha is framed for killing Kunal's uncle, the general. And so he is now hunting her, to get justice for the murder. He is a soldier, have been for ten years, have killed a lot. Yet now he is all mushy and soft and is seeing the world so fully differently than ten minutes ago. What even. It made no sense to me, honestly. He should have been way darker. Ugh. I feel a little cheated, to be fully honest.
And I sadly did not care for Esha either. We only learn a little about her, and what we do learn is repeated through the whole book. It grew beyond tiring. And then near the end of this there were almost hints of a possible love triangle maybe happening. Of her kind of feeling things for another boy. Yeah. No. So gross. Not for me. Esha was a rebel spy. Killing people. The Viper. So incredibly dangerous. Hahaha. Yeah. No. That was not true either. She was too soft. I never got to see her be really fierce at all. Fully disappointed.
There is so much I still wish to share about this book. Probably even more that I have forgotten about that I wish to share, haha. But I'll stop now. Because I have already written way too much. And have not really said anything about the plot. But I won't bother to. Because this book was simply not good. And it is going to be a trilogy. What. I would, sadly, not read more books about these characters. It would fully bore me to death. I wanted much more from this book. Parts of it were interesting for me. But too little, too late, sadly.
The Tiger at Midnight was everything I did not want in a book. And it ended up disappointing me the very most. And it is breaking my heart a little that I had to write this mostly negative review. Oh. But I had to. It do feel good to have shared all my honest thoughts about it. And I know some will want to read this book because of my review, which is great. As I know others will love this story. But I did not. I found the world and diversity to be written really well, though. But that, sadly, was all that was good about this story. Sigh.
