Nameless by Lili St Crow Series: Tales of Beauty & Madness #1
Published by Penguin Australia on March 2013
Genres: Fairytale Retelling, Fantasy
Pages: 304
Source: Publisher
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When Camille was six years old, she was discovered alone in the snow by Enrico Vultusino, godfather of the Seven—the powerful Families that rule magic-ridden New Haven. Papa Vultusino adopted the mute, scarred child, naming her after his dead wife and raising her in luxury on Haven Hill alongside his own son, Nico.
Now Cami is turning sixteen. She’s no longer mute, though she keeps her faded scars hidden under her school uniform, and though she opens up only to her two best friends, Ruby and Ellie, and to Nico, who has become more than a brother to her. But even though Cami is a pampered Vultusino heiress, she knows that she is not really Family. Unlike them, she is a mortal with a past that lies buried in trauma. And it’s not until she meets the mysterious Tor, who reveals scars of his own, that Cami begins to uncover the secrets of her birth…to find out where she comes from and why her past is threatening her now.
This review will be fairly short as 3 weeks of reading this book and only getting 36% of the way through on my third attempt at starting it, I decided to add this book to my DNF pile.
I have never read any other Lili St Crow books so I’m not sure if it’s just her style of writing but I found it very hard to get into and the actual writing seemed quite complicated and heavy – it wasn’t an easy book to read. The fact that I was over a third of the way through quite a short book yet nothing had actually happened was very disappointing. While there was some world building and it was quite an involved world that did seem very interesting, there were just tid bits of information on the hierarchical society and the paranormal aspects, nothing really solid was given. I felt like it was all tease and not a lot of substance.
I couldn’t engage with the character of Camille at all and found her quite 2 dimensional. I got over very quickly that every page focused on the fact that she had a stutter, I understand it was a big part of her life, holding her back, but it got very annoying. I am assuming her two best friends are also fairy tale characters – Ruby and Ellie though I have no idea who they are from the descriptions given though Ellie’s evil step mother was mentioned a lot so I was wondering if it was perhaps Cinderella.
I also didn’t like that a third of the way through the book there was absolutely no resemblance to Snow White the fairy tale except for one nightmare she had, nothing remotely hinted of a retelling at all.
My Goodreads friends list shows that I am definitely in the minority feeling this way about Nameless, many reviewers seemed to enjoy this book and as I said in the introduction I did only make it just over a third of the way through. I’m sure the book picked up later on I just don’t feel I should have to spend that much time getting into a YA book especially when I have a million other ones that I’m dying to read!
– Did Not Finish sadly I found this overly complicated and hard to get into.
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