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Telesa: The Covenant Keeper (Telesa, #1)

Lani Wendt Young

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Jan 18, 2015 Karen rated it really liked it

Shelves: travel-the-world

I really liked this book. I read it because it was set in Samoa, but I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. The story is based on a Samoan Legend, and I thought it worked wonderfully in this story. ...more

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Apr 18, 2019 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it did not like it

Shelves: z-read-2019, author-woman, genre-fiction, a-reviewed, author-ofcolour, genre-scifi, genre-romance, world-samoa, genre-ya, z-challenge-2019-reading-women

This book was a struggle to finish. The best thing about it were the appendices with readers’ responses, Samoan recipes and additional information. The premise was good and I wanted to get into it - myth and YA romance in Samoa, by a Samoan writer - but I could not.

First, there are the editing errors — “who’s” instead of “whose”, “for you and I”, “sheathe dress”, commas left out, small-case for upper-case. After a while, these grated.

Then, there are the women. Every woman character is a wise old This book was a struggle to finish. The best thing about it were the appendices with readers’ responses, Samoan recipes and additional information. The premise was good and I wanted to get into it - myth and YA romance in Samoa, by a Samoan writer - but I could not.

First, there are the editing errors — “who’s” instead of “whose”, “for you and I”, “sheathe dress”, commas left out, small-case for upper-case. After a while, these grated.

Then, there are the women. Every woman character is a wise old grandmother or an evil witch or a bitchy / boring fellow pupil. The main character, a young woman, makes three good friends (all male, all gorgeous) but the women at her school seethe with jealousy or bore her to bits.

And then, the romance. Where is the unresolved sexual tension? Where is the reason why these men all love this MC? It is just a given. Their pecs and abs and hunkiness is emphasised even in the most non-romantic moments (let me just save you from dramatic death by fire or drowning; omg I am swooning over your rippling chest).

The genderqueer friend (a potentially fascinating character) ended up (to me) a caricature along the lines of My Best Friend’s Wedding: s/he “preens”, is “aflutter”.

The MC dumps one man, dallies with another and then unself-reflectively churns with jealousy over dumpee’s apparently new girlfriend. Maybe teenagers are like this? Maybe their moods swing wildly from page to page? But the authors of YA needn’t be, surely.

There is a meta-moment near the end: “A Twilight moment? Get real.” And I had been reminded of Twilight with its romantically passive heroine and love triangle.

The description of a house as a “colonial mansion straight from a southern belle movie” also grated in its political blitheness.

Anyway, this book seems to have given pleasure to many others but not to me.

Format: Kindle, with aforementioned edit issues.

Read for the Goodreads Reading Women 2019 challenge, rubric “YA novel by a woman of colour”. ...more

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Jan 04, 2012 Kimberly marked it as to-read

Shelves: ebooks

Jun 03, 2015 Kathleen Valentine added it

Shelves: reading-the-world-challenge

Jun 09, 2023 Tracyene marked it as to-read

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