I have absolutely no shame in the fact that most of my book recs lately are for people's kids.
I really wanted to like Truthwitch. I finished it, just so I wouldn't be left wondering in the end. But... yeah, I didn't enjoy it. I didn't even finish my list of peeves with this book--I hated the first scene because:
1) It was almost totally unrelated to the rest of the book--it served only to introduce Aeduan.
2) Aeduan only gives a s*** about the girls because of some petty profiteur or whatever, who is rendered completely irrelevant after being in all of two scenes.
3) After the very dramatic fight, the girls use ropes they'd prepared to escape. So... why didn't they just jump down the ropes immediately? Besides, of course, that Dennard needed Aeduan to smell Safi's blood.
4) The "Chiseled Cheater" (I am not kidding that's what Safi calls him for the
entire book) never appears on-screen, nor is it explained how he was able to con a Living Lie Detector through enough rounds of cards to take her whole savings. They don't even mention him again until around page 300. He's a plot hook for the next book, and presumably a hypotenuse to throw at Safi and Merik.
You know, looking back... I thought at first that the book just needed another proofreading, but now I'm thinking it needed at
least another round of content editing. It's not bad writing, there was clearly something there that could have been amazing, but it
desperately needed further editing. (Actually, if you look it up on Goodreads and read anything that gave it less than four stars, I agree with pretty much everything that was said there.)