ARC Review: Night and Day by Georgia C. Williams

Night and Day by Georgia C. Williams

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Horse rating: 0 of 5 horses

ARC difficulty: anthill

Expected publication: May 17th 2022

There was a lot going on here.

Plot

The plot was essentially ten action movies stuffed into one book. It would have been better served to delete half the action scenes, and expand the remaining so that the story has a chance to breathe. This would give the characters time to interact during the scenes and react to things as well. And the reader. I needed a break too.

This ended up with scenes like a plane mechanical failure(?there was smoke in the cabin?danger??) taking up about half a paragraph, and never being mentioned again. Quality over quantity - pick a few scenes and then make them matter.

There were endless continuity, logic, and timescale errors. I didn’t even note the specifics down because there were just so many. This could have used a bit more Hollywood Action Movie level “realism”, there were just too many glaring issues for me to just roll with the ridiculous.

Characters

My impression of Joel is that he’s a sad little pocket calculator of a human, allegedly a 35 year old senior corporate lawyer (nepotism!) who hates his life but does not change anything. Until he runs into Raiden in a coffee shop, and then somehow things cascade? I’m not sure. It’s not an uncommon set up, but I never felt like Joel was anything but a nervous little hanger-on.

Raiden I never got a feel for. It’s all Joels POV, and with his denial towards things Raiden actually says to him, I don’t feel like we ever knew much about Raiden. His backstory is a bit infodumped later on, so I guess it was nice he shared at all.

There were so many side characters. I was skimming by the end, and wow I had no idea what was going on with all those people. The endless new groups of people were one of the reasons I started skimming in the first place, so….chicken, egg?

Focusing on a select few high priority characters (MCs, Ren and police guy?) would give the story a core group to work from, and then all the tertiary characters wouldn’t be such an issue.

Romance

The romance didn’t work for me. It’s written there, we’re told its happening, but I never felt it. Lots of oddly placed dramatic moments. I have no idea why Raiden likes Joel at all. Joel is also a Stage 5 Clinger:

Raiden had mentioned he didn’t do relationships, but Joel was certain he was an exception to his rules.

This kind of thing is a big part of their interactions - Raiden says he doesn’t do relationships, sleep with the same person twice, etc etc. Obviously there’s some differences for Joel already, but the amount that Joel protests against Raiden saying these things…dude, take a hint.

Basically, I can see what the intent was, but ultimately it didn’t work for me.


Other

The parts of this set in NYC are like taking a city tour. I’ve never been to NYC, so the street names and neighborhood names are lost on me, and mostly just distracted me from the story. It doesn’t need to be exact cross street specific.

We also toured bits of Hawaii and Japan similarly, though for some reason in Hawaii we got a literal tour guide talking about feral chickens.

I did see at the end that the author started writing this when she was 17, and has been working on it for a decade. It being started as a teenager would explain the somewhat immature approach to relationships and drama. The decade of (I’ll assume off and on) writing would also likely explain some of the choppiness and disconnect happening throughout the whole book. I mention this because if this is the case - perhaps working on something new work will let the author make things work better.


Overall, not totally irredeemable. It shows potential I think, but ultimately this one did not work for me on many levels.

As a bonus note, this was one of the most accidentally hilarious lines I came across :

He opened his drawer to start packing and was met with a flash of vibrant color. Among shades of white and black was the pastel-green shirt.

Vibrant…pastel.


I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All the opinions are my own.