birdie's Reviews > The Castle School

i hate to be the one to ruin the party by being the only one to rate this one star, but i'm not gonna beat around the bush: this was not good in my opinion.

i really wanted to like this book. it has lots of mental health representation which is so important, but despite there being some good things about it, i just didn't like how this story handled it and, well, where this should've been a very emotional story, i felt nothing. no tears for me this time.

something i did appreciate was the way this book didn't treat mental illnesses like they were a taboo. that's really important because it shouldn't be a taboo at all, of course! the thing for me is, though, that the characters were written as if they were their mental illness. yes, i wanted a story about mental health, but i didn't sign up for characters whose only characteristics had to do with their illness.

their entire story, their entire being...it all revolved around the same thing. it was as if they were just walking illnesses to be honest. i guess there were just too many characters for the characters to be well developed, but that doesn’t take away my frustration.

this book really tried and i don't think the author had any bad intentions by this, but for me? it just didn't sit right with me and i expected a lot more in other areas of the story too. i will not go into detail with that because, well, to be really honest, there's not much to say except for the obvious fact that i'm disappointed.

so yeah, that's that? i feel like i'm being too harsh because this has raving reviews, but it's just how i felt. i literally had the nicest chat with the author though (before i read her book and decided i didn't like it...) which you can read here! let's hope she won't find this review because i'll actually cry...

thank you to the publisher for providing me with this book in exchange for an honest review! this did not affect my opinions in any way.

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