Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

12:16 AM

Pages: 308
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
ISBN: 9781416986430
Genre: I literally couldn't tell you, maybe romance? I have no idea

Review by Phil

Synopsis(Goodreads.com)-When Cassie was a little girl, her grandmother told her a fairy tale about her mother, who made a deal with the Polar Bear King and was swept away to the ends of the earth. Now that Cassie is older, she knows the story was a nice way of saying her mother had died. Cassie lives with her father at an Arctic research station, is determined to become a scientist, and has no time for make-believe.

Then, on her eighteenth birthday, Cassie comes face-to-face with a polar bear who speaks to her. He tells her that her mother is alive, imprisoned at the ends of the earth. And he can bring her back — if Cassie will agree to be his bride.

That is the beginning of Cassie's own real-life fairy tale, one that sends her on an unbelievable journey across the brutal Arctic, through the Canadian boreal forest, and on the back of the North Wind to the land east of the sun and west of the moon. Before it is over, the world she knows will be swept away, and everything she holds dear will be taken from her — until she discovers the true meaning of love and family in the magical realm ofIce.

My Thoughts

Really glad this book came along because I haven't written a bad review in a while, and boy was this one a stinker. There were so many things wrong with this book that I really don't know where to begin. For one lets talk about the fact that Ice sounds like it will be awesome, well everything you think its going to be it isn't.

Ice is not the amazing fantasy adventure that McElderry marketed it to be, it actually is a sad excuse for romance with blah characters, no character development, over plot development while seeming to have no plot at all, and the lesson that if a man kidnaps you that you should fall in love with him, let him get you pregnant, and never talk to your family ever agin, also the man isn't a man but a polar bear. Also it is marketed to be a retelling of "East of the Sun, West of the Moon", when in reality it is a poorly written Beauty and the Beast wanna-be.

The biggest problem I had with this book was that the main character Cassie went from being an independent, smart, and determined young girl in the first chapter to an annoying, whiney, and overall nothing character. Within the first 20 pages all of Cassie's personality disappeared and was replaced with a blank slate of a person. The "lost souls" in the troll castle had more substance than the main character.

An overall crappy adventure with a poor lesson and an abrupt ending gives Ice the reawrd of being my least favorite book of 2013. Don't waste your time and money, luckily I only got this for 4.99, but now even that seems like it was too much. 1 star.

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