Cold as Ice!

As I had announced earlier, my friend The Introverted Schmuck and I are doing a Book Blogging Challenge Thingie in 2015 (not to be confused with BookBlogWriMo I did in November of 2014. Yeah, some people did get confused) where we recommend one book to each other every month and then write a post about it when we’re done reading it.
It could be anything! A review, a rant- whatever suits our fancy! (I keep mentioning this because I’m not really a review person)

The book she gave me to read for January was Ice by Sarah Beth Durst.

So here are my thoughts on the book:

★ First half of the book was fantastic! 😀

I began reading the book and it was so gripping that I just read on and on and on and I didn’t even realize that I had already finished half of it- and it was only about 2 hours!
Loved reading that.

#Second part not so much! 😦

As quickly as I had read the first half, the second half was just as slow.
It dragged on and on, and got so boring at places that I simply put off reading the book for a while because I didn’t want to read those parts.
One of the reasons for this, according to me, was:

#Too much description

The entire book is full of descriptions of places the protagonist is at, at that time.
In the first half of the book, the descriptions were (or at least seemed) shorter and simpler.
The second half was full of long descriptions that went on for pages!!

I realize that some of it was essential to the plot. Since the protagonist was travelling to various places all the time  in all kinds of climates and landscapes (especially in the second half), the reader needed to know about her surroundings to better understand the story but it was all a bit drab. I’m sure the writer could’ve atleast done a better job of writing the descriptoons- making them sound more interesting perhaps?

I’m not a huge fan of descriptions of places in the first place, but this book was literally testing my patience.
I did not quit reading the book, nor did I skip a single page but at a few places in the second half of the book I read out the words that described the ice or forest or whatever but I didn’t process it all in my mind. I simply wanted to move forward in the story and get to the non descriptive parts pronto!

★ Strong and courageous protagonist

Cassie, the 18 year old protagonist, is shown to be extremely brave.
She is headstrong, doesn’t listen to her dad (when she feels she’s right) and is not even scared of the forces of nature!
Once she makes up her mind about something, there’s no looking back.

#Couldn’t connect to the protagonist

You know how when you start reading a book, you instantly start feeling like the main character is your best friend?
First chapter in and you’re already rooting for him or her.
Well, I don’t know what causes that but somehow that special magic was lacking in this book.
I didn’t root for Cassie.
I wasn’t feeling her feelings.
At no point of time in the book did I go- Ha! I knew she’d do/ say that! Because that’s the Cassie I know.
Truth is, I’m still not sure what kind of a person she was really.
Other than the whole courageous thing, I know nothing about her!
She didn’t even have a good background story.

Bear was interesting

Notice how there’s neither a ‘★’ or ‘#’ before that remark, and my choice of words is “interesting”.

I’m still undecided about how I feel about Bear (that’s the name of the guy Cassie *spoiler alert* eventually falls in love with- if you couldn’t help but read it, don’t worry it wasn’t much of a spoiler, that’s not what the book focuses on)

He is really sweet, apparently also very good looking in his human form, and I adored him at the beginning of the book!
But when I got to the end (something I had been waiting for with baited breath, and something for which I endured all the descriptive parts for)
I was kind of disappointed!
He is barely even there.
He plays no part in the climax scene.

And the book is over so abruptly, I was like, “What??? That’s it?!?! After all the pains Cassie went through (not to mention the efforts I took to read so much of description), that’s the end I get?!?”

But then again, once I was done reading the book I got that nice warm feeling in my heart which I get everytime I read a good book- so I think it was worth it.
I realize that my thoughts about the book are confusing and they probably sound all contradictory to you (even to me they do, now that I’ve written them down) but that’s just the thing.
I’m very confused about this book.

On my Goodreads, I’ll be giving it 3 ★★★.
Maybe I’d give it a 3 and a half- but that’s not an option right?

Have any of you read the book? What were your thoughts on it?
If not, did my ramblings make you want to read the book or drove you away from it?

I’d really like to get some perspective on this book here.