Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Wow, I realize I'm about to slam a story that is in many ways "well written." Which will be the first thing I do note. This story shows that the writer put considerable care into developing an idea and then making sure that the story received proper proof-reading. It reads well and I didn't notice the spelling and homonym errors that show up in some indie books. Unfortunately, once we get past that, we run into the fact that I had to force myself to keep reading on a couple occasions and then ran into a "WTF!" moment that had me put the book down. I'm going to try to avoid spoiling the book for those who can tolerate the level of abject and utter stupidity found in the plot twist that made it past the editing, but no promises. So this story is about a 30 something woman living in the modern US who somehow is projected back in time to when we was fifteen, but then puts in in a parallel universe where around 1941 magic returned in the form of monsters and demi-humans who nearly wiped out the human race before humanity developed enough magic to stop them. It's a great idea for a plot and a universe, although I noticed early on that the world building which needed to occur to make this work long term was completely absent. There is little to no rhyme or reason to anything here. And a lot missing like how can humanity feed itself if its restricted to a few fortified and crowded cities. (typical problem with these tales). But then we find that Gwen despite having 15+ years of experience over your average teen and having lived as an adult suffers from Tier ten level angst and tier infinity levels of self-doubt. She's just NOT a fun character. She's constantly second guessing herself and therefore making the usual inexplicably dumb decisions. These result in multiple issues that are inserted into the plot. But wait. Not content to give us a poor main character, the supporting cast makes even less sense at times. There's a number of factions that are never defined, or even really identified, but they twist the plot (seemingly by getting otherwise intelligent characters to do dumb things.) I was annoyed at the first time this happened. Disappointed with the second, but the third was too much. In the end I have to say that this story was way to ambitious for the experience of the author. It cannot seem to decide if its a coming of age story, a magical academy story, a mystery, a spy novel or some kind of action/horror hybrid. And in the expanse of too many plots it is perhaps one of the bigger disappointments for me. I want to give this a better grade, but I cannot. In my eyes the plot just collapses too hard and that to me forces me to put it at 1 star. I definitely recommend avoiding this book.