Book Review: Song of the Current

Title: Song of the Current
Author: Sarah Tolcser
Rating: 3/5 Stars
Series: Song of the Current (Book 1)
Why?: On TBR

I would like to apologize in advance for any sentences or paragraphs that do not make sense. I tried to  give myself a pep talk before writing this review because I've been having trouble with words lately and all my brain could come up with was "I can has words." So it's been a rough couple of weeks.

Okay so I went into this book knowing that it was highly rated on Goodreads and that was about it. I didn't read the little summary on Goodreads or even the front cover flap because the cover was just so pretty and I am a hard-core cover judger. Not gonna lie. Over 75% of the books I read it's because I thought the cover looked interesting (and I should qualify this statement by saying that I'm standing in the science fiction/fantasy section when I do this cover-judging because... reasons). So just know that my expectations for this book were only based on it's rating on Goodreads when I added it to my TBR.

So I guess I'll start off with the negatives and then go into the positives, just to switch it up a bit.

What did I not like? The plot twist predictability. Granted, it's become a lot easier in recent years for me to figure out plot twists just because once you read a certain number of books you can start seeing these patterns in the storylines. However, with this book I felt like it was grabbing you by the hand and dragging you to the "big reveal," which wound up not being that big of a reveal because it was so dang obvious. I felt like you were supposed to be shocked when you discover *things* but for me it was kind of a "well DUH" moment. So, plot twists were not twisty.

Except the one at the end.

That one was cool.

My other main complaint was that there were romance teasings throughout the entire novel (which was okay, I mean romance isn't my things but as long as it's small I'll just pretend it doesn't exist) but then at the very end it was like romance to the MAX. There was all the romance was going on, and it felt like the last 50-100 pages belonged to a completely different book. I felt like it was just romance overload at the end... I know that in the blurb it's called a "romantic fantasy" (see I read it now...) but I felt like that only described the first 3/4ths of the book. The last 25% was just like pure romance. REALLY not my thing.

What did I like?
[Teeny tiny spoiler ahead. Like teeny tiny.]
I loved the setting. I think it's fairly obvious by now that my favorite time period to read about is when they have swords and minimal to no guns, and that the modern time period just isn't my thing. And this book had PIRATES. Caro wasn't Lila Bard, but she was still awesome! (Side note: super awesome to have a protagonist that isn't a fan of blood. Most protagonists are all cool and chill about it and Caro and I will be over there trying not to look at it.) And water gods... water is by far my favorite element to read about, and this just made me a little puddle of happiness (get it, puddle? because water? I'm so funny.)

Also the whole not-fitting-in motif/theme/thingy was so prevalent throughout this story and it made me so happy. Sometimes it can be so hard to feel like you belong somewhere, especially when certain things come naturally to everybody else, but not you. So the fact that Caro was in that situation and was able to work through it like a normal person would, she didn't just like wake up one day and all of her problems were solved. So the fact that this was a fun, action-packed story yet it was still so relatable (as relatable as a story can be with pirates, river gods, and shadow people) just made it so much easier to read and enjoy.

This is a really quick read. I read the last 200ish+ pages in like 50ish minutes? My math is bad so that could be wrong but anyway the book didn't drag at all (excluding that annoying romance part) and I didn't feel like I was dragging myself through the entire thing. Even all of the sailing stuff couldn't slow me down mostly because I just skipped over it and figured out what had happened from context clues (one of the most useful things I've ever learned from English classes in school).

I would definitely recommend this book to other people. It's fun, it's quick, and there are PIRATES.

Just maybe read the blurb first. It might help.

See this review on Goodreads.